Power corrupts, and the offer of £117m for a bunch of profiles of people showing how drunk they got at the weekend corrupts absolutely. Yes folks, Microsoft has bought a 1.6% stake in Facebook, valuing 23-year-old Mark Zuckerberg's dorm room creation at close to £7.3bn.
That means Zuckerberg has generated more than £300m for every year of his life. That is not a bad return. But it is still half that of Bill Gates, who has generated about £600m a year. Downtime is lagging behind a little, having generated roughly £0m.
Still, with such power at his fingertips, it cannot be long until Zuckerberg goes mad with power. Downtime fears for the future of Facebook. What would people do without it? Well, they would probably use one of the hundreds of other social networking sites.
If you have ever felt something close to what young Zuckerberg must be feeling, or have seen the influence of great power on those around you, please let us know what (hopefully amusing) consequences resulted.
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This was first published in October 2007
