Collabo.com

Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian investment firm that recently purchased a 2% preferred stock stake in the Facebook social media company is looking to acquire an additional $100 million in common stock shares. The $200 million agreement in May of this year valued Facebook at approximately $10 billion.

The deal this week for current and former Facebook employees is offering $14.77 per common stock share which carries a lower valuation of $6.5 billion. This is not to say that Facebook is now valued at $6.5 billion, rather that common stock does not offer the same privileges and guaranties for shareholders as preferred stock. “If the Facebook employee has been locked up several years, it’s a good opportunity for them to sell some shares and get some liquidity,” says Stuart Campbell, a lawyer with Davis Wright Tremaine LLP in Seattle who focuses on startups.

Facebook board member Marc Andreessen last week stated he expects company revenues to reach $500 million in 2009.

Rival platform MySpace finally lost traction to Facebook in the United States this May based on comScore traffic statistics. Facebook has been the number one social network in the world for over a year now.

Source: Bloomberg

Last week an article discussing Twitter’s lack of loyalty stated that this was not an issue for Facebook or MySpace. Well at least for the latter there seems to be a difference of opinion, or actually fact. Today an article in the New York Times discussing a MySpace makeover and the challenges facing their new CEO Owen Van Natta who is just starting his second week, also points out comScore statistics that show MySpace in actually losing users, most likely to Facebook. Several of my friends have used MySpace bulletins to let their friends know that they are moving to Facebook. Some even go as far as to change their profile names to phrases such as “Jenny (Who now only uses Facebook).”

Well in Twitter’s case, my opinion is that these flaky tweeters are simply the effect of Twitter’s recent popularity spike. Microblogging is not for everyone. I’m sure Twitter will settle into steady growth pattern in the near future. Perhaps if Twitter does add new features to their platform they may appeal to a wider and more dedicated user base. As for MySpace, they may need to focus their efforts on their younger users to bring some momentum back to their social networking super-engine! Both of these platforms still have alot of potential that I think has yet to be realized.