In what has to be the biggest case of allegiance to misguided ideals that I’ve ever seen, the founder of Facebook.com turned down a $1.6 billion offer from Yahoo! because he didn’t want to be labeled a sell-out. Read that again, if you have to. The “genius” who recreated Friendster (I know the kids love MySpace, but can Friendster please get some love for A) being first and B) actually taking the time to care about their site design?) and attached .edu addresses to it is so scared of his boys calling him a homo that he turned down 1.6 billion dollars. (Side note re: MySpace vs. Friendster … I remember that crucial societal shift that happened when MySpace overtook Friendster and I remember it making me feel incredibly old. It was the exact same feeling I got when I learned that ‘NSync were outselling the Backstreet Boys. I was like, “what?”)

Look, if you’re a musician and you don’t want to sell your songs to advertisers, that’s one thing. If you’re a writer who doesn’t want to be on Oprah, that’s another. I even give respect to the Craig’s List founders for not caring about turning a profit. But this kid is not defending substance, nor is he opting out because he doesn’t want to make money. He’s holding out because he thinks his business model is so genius he is bound to make more than $1.6 billion.

I think the biggest question here is: where the Hell did Yahoo! get $1.6 billion? I haven’t searched the web using Yahoo! since I was on GopherMail!