Facebook just sold off a chunk of itself for $200 million or so, suggesting the social networking site is worth some $10 billion. But like fellow online time wasters YouTube and Twitter, it’s tough to see how they could be worth that much.

Indeed, like those websites and other online publishers such as newspapers, Facebook faces the problem of coming up with a retroactive business model. It’s got the users, now it needs the cash… but making changes — say, charging for the site or features — will be difficult as Facebookers are a loud and angry bunch of complainers.

The obvious answer is advertising — its the golden goose newspapers are praying will stave off their deaths, but it’s not been enough to keep Google’s YouTube making a profit so far. Indeed, short of mooted plans to sell marketing data, it’s safe to assume Facebook is mostly about the advertising — unless the $1 to send a pixel gift in the shape of beer or birthday cake suddenly takes off.

Last year, the global online advertising market hit $47 billion in revenue, and was predicted by the Kelsey Group to hit $147 billion by 2012. Whether you agree with the numbers or not, online advertising is indeed growing.

Can Facebook contribute $10 billion of that? It has 200 million active users, of which half sign in each day. A lot of people are saying no. Now, maths aren’t my strong point (neither is spelling, in case you care) but according to Google, if you divide $10 billion dollars by 200 million users, you get $50.

So if we ignore costs — and the cost of servers and bandwidth is not insignificant — Facebook needs to sell $50 of advertising for each and every user to turnover $10 billion.

However, the site isn’t covered in ads, and those ads are cheap. Like most online systems, advertisers can pick how much they want to pay per click to drive people to their own sites — some people will choose to pay very very little indeed, mere pennies.

But those ads can be targeted loosely to users. I get a lot for dating sites, weight loss plans and credit cards — which are pretty well plastered all over the rest of the internet, too, so Facebook or its advertisers are clearly not taking full advantage of the extra data yet. (Either that, or I really am a poor, lonely, fat slob. Sob.)

In theory, Facebook should be able to charge more for its ads than those across the wider internet, as more is known about the user — this is the same idea behind more controversial behavioural advertising systems, such as Phorm. But rather than skim through our network traffic to find out about us as Phorm wants to do, we just tell Facebook up front, and update it frequently.

For the sake of my poor math skills, we’ll pick an even number. Lets say — and I’m making this up, to be clear — that the average PPC ad is worth $0.50 on Facebook. That means they need to surface enough ads to get users to click 100 times. If I’m on the site once a day, I need to click an advert once every 3 or so days. (For the record, I’m sure I don’t.)

Still, to me, that’s the business model they’ve got. Show lots of actually targeted ads, so I actually want to click, and hope to high heaven you’ve got enough users so the payments add up. Does it have potential? Definitely. But only if Facebook can keep the user numbers high, and get better, more relevant advertising that’s worth more…

At the moment, though… well, based on the repetitive ads about credit, dating and weight loss miracles, that’s just not happening. Indeed, at the current rate, Facebook doesn’t look to be worth much more than what we all pay for it.

Mock my maths or share your thoughts in the comments below… Is Facebook worth $10 billion?

Google has decided it’s not going to be picking up any newspapers after all.

There was speculation Google might buy a failing paper (or support a charity set up to help papers move to non-profit status), but chief exec Eric Schmidt told the FT that wasn’t likely to happen.

While there are several good reasons for Google not to buy a newspaper — they’re going out of business, Warren Buffet warned against it, they hate you — Schmidt told the paper that his firm was “trying to avoid crossing the line” between being a tech/web firm and offering content.

But he might end up paying for content somehow in the long run, anyway, as the news industry has long been calling for the search giant to share some revenue it makes off Google News.

Schmidt seems to be looking to a different, mutually-beneficial solution instead. He said the experts at his firm were working with papers, including the Washington Post, to help them improve their web offering. News? On the web? Who’da thunk of that?

For the full interview, including video, full transcript and other newspaper unfriendly extras, check out the FT’s website… Hey, maybe this online news thing can work…

For our working from home experiment, our lovely editor tasked each of us with working somewhere else… I had the pleasure of checking out the great outdoors.

When it’s dreary, grey and windy — like today at my end of London — I’d just as soon be in the office. But when it’s sunny and nice, working outside has obvious benefits.

And obvious difficulties, too. Even with clouds, computer screens are harder to see, and most parks don’t have power sockets (though how cool would that be?) There’s no nice comfy seating, or adjustable temperatures. And, if you’re out of range of your home wireless, you’re gonna need a mobile dongle or some other web-on-the-go system.

Because of this, it’s kind of a pain to work in the wild. Which is why I’d advise you ditch the laptop, bring an email-enabled phone, and work in very specific ways in the park.

If it’s sunny out and you have a lot of network-unfriendly paperwork, why not go get some sun? If you have a team planning meeting that doesn’t need powerpoint — and let’s face it, when is powerpoint every necessary — why not head to the park? Your team members will be more relaxed, and it will feel like a prize and not a chore. We don’t need to sit in front of computers all day, especially not when it’s nice out… There’s nothing worse than spending the whole day under flourescent lighting when the sun is high in the sky.

Aside from my rather-unproductive park excursion, things are looking up for my end of the home working experiement. The horrible buzzing noise has stopped (saving my efficiency and my sanity) and my electrician just popped his head in to say he was off for the day… on the downside, I’m off work in less than an hour, so I don’t have much quiet time left. But at least I got my laundry done.

Welcome to National Work from Home Day. Working from home is a pretty personal thing. If you’ve got a nice house, with fast broadband, and no interruptions, working from home saves on commuting time and cost, gives you a break out of the office, and lets you focus without being interrupted by calls and the like.

But that’s a big ‘if’. I live in a flatshare — it’s a nice house, but it’s not my own, and I have no dedicated office space, so I’m typing this on my bed. If I stay like this all day, my dell laptop will burn my legs. There’s something to be said for a desk…

There’s also a weird buzzing sound coming from just outside my house, which is loud enough to be heard in every room. While I’m not a fan of flourescent lighting, at least it’s not this noisy. So I’m cranking music loudly to cover it up, which is pretty much what I do at work.

And then I went downstairs for a cup of tea. Not only did I actually have to stand there waiting for tea to boil — we’ve got a boiler in Dennis Towers for instant tea, it really is amazing — but then our electrician showed up.

Electrician: “Oh, I didn’t think anyone would be home. Do you mind if get working anyway? It’s just a bit of drilling…”

So now I’ve got drilling and loud, irregular banging noises. And it’s not even 930am yet. I don’t have much faith for the rest of the day. I’ve been tasked with working from the great outdoors — as in, the local park. If the weather continues to be as dull as it currently is, that may not be happening… but then, sitting outside in the rain might be better than the drilling and buzzing in my house.

I’ll be back with an update at the end of the day…

Apparently Dell was worried the sheer masculinity of its main retail site was scaring away sensitive female buyers, as the PC firm has created one just for the ladies — and named it Della.
(Does this mean women get to call the firm’s CEO Michelle Della, now? Because I’m going to.)

The unsurprisingly pink microsite (with a very odd logo) is pushing Dell/Della’s netbook lineup. The main page offers no information about the specs of said netbooks, but does push a “stylish sleeve” to help it “match your lifestyle.” Who cares if it works, so long as it matches my shoes, and goes well with a latte, right ladies?

Della’s main sections feature the “products”, as well as recycling tips, a random style journalist (who, among other things, is a columnist at Ty Pennington at Home) and a few “tech tips.”

At the moment, the tech tips tell how modern women like myself could use a netbook as an e-reader (OMG, you can like, read words on them?! I hope they have the Shopaholic series!) and go online to book a vacation (oh I won’t need that, I always get a man to book my trips!).

Dell/a also tells how such technology can be used to find workout advice (thank god for that! I need to lose weight — do you think my MacBook makes my butt look big?) and point out that netbooks are mobile devices, which means you can take them places. Like, around and stuff.

If you think that’s bad — and you should — it used to be worse. The current edition of the tech tips page is actually an edited one. Underneath the heading “five ways to use a netbook”, there’s now a note saying:

Editors Note: Some of you have read this article over the last several days & will notice a few modifications. You spoke, we listened. Thank you for your ongoing feedback.

The previous version of the page, according to the wonderfully sarcastic Register, had two more tips, one of which told us ladies that a netbook can be used to “find recipes online, store and organize them, and watch cooking videos.” Watch. Cooking. Videos. My god, the internet is fabulous! If I’d only known there were cooking videos out there! Because I spend my whole life cooking, and then working out! That’s all I want to do, because I have a uterus. (Edit: Kate wrote in with more details of the deleted garbage here.)

Not that there’s anything wrong with cooking, but does Dell/a have any women who aren’t housewives working for them? Maybe in sales or reception? You know they won’t have any in IT…

Despite the fact that I’m a woman, I do actually know what a netbook is — and I don’t need one to organise my recipes and workouts, thanks. Guess I better buy from someone else, then.

If the billion euro fine leveled against Intel by the EU wasn’t enough, European commissioner Neelie Kroes has suggested the chipmaker change its tag line from “sponsor of the future” to “sponsor of the European taxpayer.”

Oh, snap.

The line got a few giggles at the press conference, but the EU should probably not show too much excitement at the prospect of adding those billion euros to its own budget, lest people start wondering if its constant bills to Microsoft, Intel and the like has more to do with staying financially sound in a recession than tackling anti competitiveness.

On the other hand, it’s nice to see them enjoying themselves.

Check out the press conference clip below:

It’s pranks like this that make The Pirate Bay — convicted copyright infringers though they may be — so incredibly lovable.

The Pirate Bay foursome have been fined £2.4 million and sentenced to jail time after a Swedish court found them guilty of copyright infringement. They’ve all along said they’d never pay (and with a retrial looming, may not have to), but founder Gottfrid Svartholm has decided to try something a little bit more clever than just withholding funds.

Svartholm has created what he calls an ‘internet-avgift’ — that’s ‘internet fee’ in English. Basically, internet users use the system to send very small payments, as little as 13 American cents, to the opposing lawyers. The trick is processing so many payments will cost more than the actually fine.

In his blog, Svartholm notes:

“The music companies will not benefit from this, instead it will cost them money to handle and process all the money.”

He’s calling at a ‘Distributed Denial of Dollars’ attack, as it uses money to ‘overload’ the other side, rather than traffic. Check out the full details here. He added, rather vindictively:

“Since Danowsky & Partners Advokatbyrå is a small firm, all the transactions are handled by hand. Handling all payments will be time consuming, costing the law firm in productivity. Maybe it will even affect their success in other cases.”

Although, if the trial is overturned, hopefully the lawyers don’t choose to pay the foursome back this way…