Facebook gets devalued

13.02.2009
Well, we finally know what Facebook is really worth -- or, at least, what Facebook thinks it is worth: . That would be , give or take a few hundred million.

How do we know this? A sealed agreement that came unsealed, thanks to the techno-stupidity of the legal experts involved and the magic of copy and paste.

But first, some background.

Back in 2004, ConnectU founders Divya Narendra and twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss accused Facebook boy wonder Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their idea for a social network (then called Harvard Connection) after they hired the geeky sophomore to do a little coding for them. Naturally, they sued.

Last April, they , which we now know to have been $20 million in cash, plus $11 million to $45 million in stock, depending on whether Facebook was worth about $9 a share (its own estimate) or $36 (Microsoft's valuation).

You'd think $20 million in US greenbacks would be enough for anybody, not even counting the stock, but you'd be wrong. After , Winklevoss et al tried to overturn the agreement, thinking they could wring a lot more money out of Plucky Zucky.