Mormon Church Makes Bid To Acquire Facebook | Hacker News Reader

Mormon Church Makes Bid To Acquire Facebook

brimdeforest.com

41 pointsdamien36 comments

I would be surprised to hear of a buyout bid for Facebook from the church, but some sort of technology acquisition deal would not surprise me at all. The leadership of the LDS church is definitely on the ball when it comes to taking advantage of new technology. It's not just genealogy either - there is an active direction from the leadership to embrace the internet, blogs, and social media.

A close friend of mine wrote a blog entry on this very topic in July - http://teddios.blogspot.com/2008/07/church-and-intertubes.ht...

I'm LDS myself - I studied Computer Science at BYU, and I worked in the massive underground data center and supercomputing facilities while I was there. The depth of technological sophistication and awareness that the church employs is pretty impressive.

There appears to be some LDS fascination with the collection of data. I live in a very Mormon area, and it seems like an unusual number of the Mormons in my area are in IT, especially as it relates to database type work.

Of course, this is all just anecdotal evidence; I just thought it was intersting.

That being said, I think that LDS is probably the most data-centric religious organization I can think of.

Unconfirmed rumor. Probably a hoax.

Edit: s/Possibly/Probably

It's pretty believable though. The Mormon church is all about community and wholesome family activities, and so it's conceivable that they would use Facebook to promote those sorts of activities among young people.

Yeah, because the Mormons' must totally admire all the flirting and poking that takes place on Facebook, right? ;)

If the Mormons had enough cash they'd buy hell and turn it into Disney land.

Eh, the genealogy side is more likely than trying to promote wholesome activities.

This puzzles me. Why are Mormons so fascinated with genealogy?

Aren't they a little concerned that if they keep researching genealogy they might find out that, say, Native Americans are in fact not one of the tribes of Israel magically transported halfway across the world and "cursed" with dark skin as punishment for their sins? Because, y'know, that would pretty much prove their entire religion false.

I'm not a Mormon (or even religious), so this is conjecture, but I believe that it has to do with posthumous baptism.

Beyond that, I'm sure there that some of the original interest in genealogy had to do with attempts to prevent inadvertent incest during the years where polygamy was accepted.

You are correct about the posthumous baptism thing. Your idea about incest is plausible but I don't see any evidence for it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptism_for_the_dead#Genealogy_...

because logical inconsistencies are always instant death for a religion...

s/Possibly/Probably/

Done.

If anyone can provide evidence, please share.

GIS for "The shear depth and breadth":

http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/895/shearsgk0.jpg

Maybe its just more efficient to build facebook apps to convert people than ride around on a bicycle and knocking on doors. Lazy evangelism.

Two central tenets of Mormonism are missionary work and ancestor...umm...I don't want to say worship, but it's the only thing that comes to mind to sufficiently cover the dedication the Mormon Church instills in its membership. Those two things actually do seem pretty consonant with having control of a popular social network like Facebook, and if the church really is bringing down five billion a year, buying Facebook is not an outlandish idea at all.

Internally, Facebook stock is being traded at about a $4 billion valuation...so an $8 billion offer, for example, would be practically impossible to turn down if we assume that the parties making the decision are at least a little interested in money. Zuck may be a good Jewish boy, but being a billionaire at twenty-five seems a hard offer to turn down, even if it means handing over the reins of your baby to a rather odd cult.

Unless, of course, Zuckerberg really does believe Facebook, and the "social graph", is as important as Google in the future of the Internet, in which case, the $15 billion valuation numbers indicated by the MS investment a couple years back would be lowball, and no offer the LDS could make would be sufficient. (I'm not on that bandwagon...but I know there are folks who are, and maybe Zuckerberg is one of them.)

Is this a joke? Even though I know it's the middle of August my brain momentarily thought "wait... is it April 1st today?"

I actually double-checked my calendar.

from Valleywag.

http://secretenemyhideout.com/post/46652783/i-heard-from-an-...

.. and I know I'm totally going to get downmodded for mentioning VW - but the link to what the had is there for reference anyway.

Someone drank the Kool-Aid. And I'm not talking about the LDS stuff:

"the specter of pairing it with one of the most detailed, accurate, and widespread social maps in existence (Facebook) is truly terrifying"

http://mattmaroon.com/?p=345 does a good job explaining why Facebook is not a "detailed" or "aaccurate" or "widespread" "social map".

He does no such thing, he basically just argues it's not as valuable or useful as Google is. Big surprise there.

The Mormon Church website has crashed. (5:54PM PDT) http://www.lds.org/

This seems very doubtful. I am LDS as well and an outright acquisition of a for profit business seems odd for a non-profit organization. I am not saying it isn't possible, just that it is not likely.

If it is anything, I see it as a technology acquisition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finances_of_The_Church_of_Jesus...

I knew about most of those, but it still seems unlikely to do an outright acquisition of a company like facebook. For the most part those other corporations the church owns are there to fulfill the needs of church members and humanitarian organizations, such as the ranches and farms it owns.

Maybe Vatican will buy Myspace soon. They can't stay far behind.

I'm not sure I understand the motivation for LDS to own Facebook.

Sounds like lots of eggs in one basket for a company that certainly hasn't proven it's value yet.

Maybe its just Bain Capital doing this, and people assign anything one Mormon does(Romney) to all of them. And yes I know Romney is no longer involved with Bain.

I'm going to be downmodded for this, but I can't resist... WTF?

edit: geez, I didn't think it would be this bad.

One of the few things that's almost an auto-downmod for me is "I'm going to be downmodded for this".

One of the few things that's almost an auto-downmod for me is 'One of the few things that's almost an auto-downmod for me is "I'm going to be downmodded for this"'

!quine

One of ... n/m, its not reddit.

I have yet to see a discussion about moderation that has been productive, and this confirms my suspicions.

Thanks for screwing that up.

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