Facebook, the second largest social network in the US, is in talks to sell to Yahoo for a figure that could approach $1 billion, according to the WSJ. Yahoo has been talking to Facebook over the past year - they've also held discussions with Microsoft and Viacom.

There have been Facebook acquisition rumors before, of course - back in March, the company reportedly turned down a $750 million acquisition offer, deciding to hold out for $2 billion (although the facts were sketchy). With MySpace seeming like a steal at $580M (although many still debate this), $1 billion is high but not astronomical. Facebook isn't as large as MySpace, of course - at last check, they had 9 million or so users against MySpace's 100 million plus. But with plans to open up the site beyond colleges and companies, there's certainly room for growth. It could, of course, come to nothing: the Bebo-BT acquisition offer ($552 million) was never confirmed, and there have been subsequent rumors of a Bebo acquisition by Viacom.

Facebook has also faced some of its biggest problems over the past few weeks - the backlash against the Facebook facelift and the concerns about opening up the service to outsiders. Would "Facebook, a Yahoo company" upset Facebook users as much as the Flickr acquisition? As long they don't insist on making Facebook users log in with their Yahoo IDs, there probably won't be an issue.

Is Yahoo a good match? It's hard to say - they've tried hard to focus on social software (Flickr, del.icio.us, Yahoo Answers), but they seem to have missed the boat on the big mainstream hits like MySpace. YouTube has always seemed like a better match, but there are rumors spreading about YT, too.

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Related: Facebook-iTunes, Facebook Backlash, Facebook Credit Cards, Facebook Notes.