• The Associated Press/San Francisco Chronicle, Thursday, February 12, 2009 11:45 AM

In a clever bit of journalistic hackery, The Associated Press has uncovered the full details of the Facebook-ConnectU settlement that was widely reported yesterday. How did they do it? By simply copying and pasting an electronic version of the hearing, which contained large portions that were blacked out, onto another document. Doing so allowed the news agency to see what was written in the blacked out portions. As TechCrunch's Jason Kincaid writes: "Just, wow."

The document reveals that Facebook is actually worth $3.7 billion, a far cry from the $15 billion valuation Microsoft slapped on the company when it bought a 1.6% stake in 2007. This comes as little surprise, though, as various reports have linked Facebook to a $4 billion over the last several months.

Under the settlement, Facebook agreed to pay ConnectU $20 million in cash and 1,253,326 shares of common stock. Based on the Microsoft valuation, the stock was worth $45 million, but under Facebook's $3.7 billion valuation, it was only worth $11 million. Yesterday, internal documents from the law firm used by ConnectU's founders, the Winklevoss brothers, said the settlement was worth $65 million. However, that was based on Microsoft's valuation of the company; based on today's present valuation, the settlement was really worth $31 million. Still, not bad for a company that never mounted any kind of a challenge to Mark Zuckerberg's social networking empire.

Read the whole story at The Associated Press/San Francisco Chronicle »