The best time to invest in social networks is when the corporates sell....

Over the last few year there have been a number of increasingly eye wateringly high priced purchases of social networks - Friends Reunited at $280m (£175m), MySpace at $ 580m and then Bebo at $850m. Usually they sell for for cash upfront, so the founders get to run away with the loot and leave the social network to do what come naturally - ie flounder, as each of these things has a limited lifecycle.

Now come the eye wateringly low sales - in true first in, first out mode its Friends Reunited which apparently has an offer in* at £15m. a mere 93% writedown, from Pipex's Peter Dubens:

Serial entrepreneur Peter Dubens snapped up a number of small internet service providers on the cheap when the dotcom bubble burst, including Homecall, set up by former Phones4U owner John Caudwell, and Bulldog, the residential broadband provider jettisoned by Cable & Wireless, and rolled them into his Pipex business. In 2007 he sold Pipex to Tiscali for £210m, now part of Carphone Warehouse's TalkTalk operation.

Aka the smart money.....

The thing that always fascinates me is that these large corporations seem to be able to unerringly buy overvalued assets at the top of the market, despite (because of?) the best consulting and legal and financial advice money can buy.

Anyway, we hear continual rumours of sales for MySpace and Bebo as well, no doubt at fractions of their original values as well. Be interesting to see what their writedowns are as % compared to Friends Reunited. As for buying Facebook or Twitter, best is to pick it off whoever buys it first time round perhaps?

*Guardian piece I linked to notes it is unconfirmed