Professor Elam

Facebook turned down a $1 B offer not long ago. Now it is courting investment on the idea that it is worth !10 B. Wow.

MSFT is upping the ante trying to buy the company. Murdoch owns My Space which is making Fox Interactive Media lots of money.  But Facebook is even more popular.  The article points out that at $10 B, facebook has twice the market cap of the New York Times.  Not bad for a new start up web company.  The article goes on to point out that Facebook could become an operating system, yep, there are thousands of widgets and programs designed just for Facebook.  This explains why MSFT wants to buy Facebook, what if folks switch from Office 2007 to Facebook, at least for web surfing and exchanging personal greetings.

And another thing. Facebook and My Space are used for people to post notes and videos and photos of

THEMSELVES.

I have the students in Prof Development read Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends.  Carnegie makes the statement that 3/4 of all the people one meets want your sympathy.  He wrote that comment in the 1930s.  The success of these two web sites mirrors Carnegie’s comment from 70 years ago. All these folks are saying Hey World Look at Me!  Everyone believes he or she is the center of the universe!  Just yesterday I received an e mail from a chap who used the personal pronoun I nine times in a short e mail, gee no question as to the real message there!  Facebook creators understand this universal truth, eveyone is interested in themselves…..If we remember that in dealing with people we will all be more successful with them.