Look, this is not something you can write on 1-Apr and have anyone believe it:

Li Ka-shing, Hong Kong billionaire and CEO of telecommunications conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa, has increased his investment in Facebook in excess of $100 million.

Man, that is some walking-around money to throw around. Or away. I know this cat is several billion dollars smarter than I am, but look at the numbers:

• Facebook: 60M subscribers
• QQ: 300M subscribers

What is QQ? Well, I'd say it was the facebook of China, but there is a major difference - it is profitable.

Profitable?

Yep , they had around a 40% operating margin - $224M bottom line off $523 million.

Facebook? Uh, not so much. I've heard estimates that Facebook lost $200M last year on revenue of, well, diddly.

What is kind of interesting to me about QQ is that <15% of their revenue comes from advertising and the rest is ringtones and krep like that.

So there is some real upside left there.

Why Invest In Facebook

I have no idea. Perhaps it gives him some leverage to be a dealmaker, maybe the later investors are getting crazy mad warrants.  Or maybe there is so much money and so few good deals that people are spreading their bets around the margins.

Why is QQ Profitable?

I suspect that the QQ guys went into this thing from day one with plans to make money.

I know the Facebook guys were just "gaining marketshare" (of what?) and "getting momentum" (towards what?) and "achieving critical mass" (I know of what!).

Beware The Bubble

Remember the Time Warner / AOL merger?   Remember what happened six months later?

Well, if you see QQ and Facebook merge to get "synergies" or "global market" then you should probably go long on cash equivalencies.