Apple buys Facebook (…or not)

Apple Inc - Photo from my iBook

Image by Farid Iqbal via Flickr

Every year Danish Saxo Bank publishes a list of 10 predictions that follow 3 simple rules and that are based on the Black Swan Theory:

  1. It is unpredictable
  2. It carries massive impact
  3. After the fact we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was.

In this years list we see a prediction on Apple and Facebook:

What do you do when you want domination of the electronic and mobile device consumer market and have no significant presence in social networking? Oh, and a war chest of a mere USD 51 billion? You buy Facebook, the mother lode of (yet to be monetized) social networks. Facebook is worth USD 43 billion, according to sharespost.com. In interviews, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has explained that Apple was in talks with Facebook about partnership opportunities, but that the talks ultimately produced nothing. Facebook was after “onerous terms that we could not agree to”, according to Jobs. At the Web 2.0 Summit Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg called for Apple to ease its approach to connecting Ping with Facebook, and said that Apple had to “get on the bus”. Steve Jobs might get on the bus indeed and buy Facebook outright. It makes perfect sense; Facebook doesn’t compete against Apple and it ‘faces up’ to Google, which Jobs loves since Google has become his new number one enemy. It’s a deal made in heaven… The gigantic 500+ million Facebook user base could be integrated across Apple’s consumer products and services – every Facebook user automatically has an iTunes Store account and FaceTime chat is integrated into Facebook chat. That’s a lot of iOS devices.”

Wow, that would be something. BTW this is not the only source talking about this possibility, TUAW did it, Macficionado also reported on this and Gizmodo reported on the dinner date of Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg at the beginning of October 2010.

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