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"Viacom has ruled itself out of the bidding for Facebook, America's number two social network, while admitting that YouTube is on to a good thing.  During a TV interview with Charlie Rose, Chairman Sumner Redstone said \"We would not consider Facebook, we looked at it. The price is too high.\"  Presumably Redstone is referring to the $1 billion price tag that's on the table at the Yahoo-Facebook talks.\nWhat's surprising here is that Viacom lost out in the bidding for MySpace, which News Corp later snapped up and turned into one of the web's biggest success stories.  Redstone also explained that he had ordered former-Chief Executive Tom Freston to close the MySpace deal, and admitted that it was a \"humiliating experience\" to see News Corp eventually bag the social network.  As it turns out, Freston had the opportunity to buy MySpace for $500 million - below the $580 million that News Corp later agreed to pay (and it was still a bargain).  His failure to secure MySpace was one of the reasons that Freston was booted from his role in September.  Redstone also claimed that MySpace is worth around $1.5 billion - way below the (totally unsupported) $10-20 billion figure that one analyst predicted for the future. \nYouTube a Possibility?\nHowever, Redstone declined to rule out YouTube as a potential acquisition target, adding \"It's a very good company.\"  That's despite the hype that YouTube may be even more valuable than Facebook - perhaps worth $1.5 billion.  More recently, entrepreneur Mark Cuban said that anyone who buys YouTube price is a moron, due to the copyright issues involved.  \nBut the fact is that Redstone could be bluffing on either count: Facebook might still be a possibility if Yahoo doesn't get there first."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2006/10/05/viacom-we-wont-buy-facebook-but-maybe-youtube/>