The Facebook of Mormon

Caught this on Steve Hodson's grumpyblog - have no idea if its true, but it makes you think

I heard from an employee close to the deal that the Mormon church’s genealogy business made an unsolicited bid to acquire Facebook.

The Mormon Church maintains the largest genealogical database in the United States and apparently has the cash reserves necessary to make an offer of the magnitude necessary to acquire Facebook.

The latest update to the story is as of 2:04AM

UPDATE (2:04 am): My inquiry a couple of hours ago to an old college friend who works for one of the interested parties has indicated that there is more at play here than meets the eye, and definitely more than just a kernel of truth to this rumor.

Its a more off-the-wall example than usual of the Offset Economics that underpin the "FreeConomics" of Web 2.0 (ie someone has to pay for the free lunches if the users won't), but given that the whole FreeConomic model requires people with money in other pockets to fund it, I suspect we will see more of these more "interesting" deals. The combination of social network and genealogical database gives rise to all sorts of fascinating Sci-Fi plots as well.

Of course, there would also have to be a small restructuring of the way the social graph treated family groups........