I commented last week on the reported transaction between IPG and Facebook.  Well, it turns out that my suspicions were valid, and that the deal was a misunderstanding.  There has been a clarification, reported by Rafat Ali, that the deal consisted of:

• an agreement that IPG would spend $10m in advertising on Facebook,
• an equity stake of 0.5% in Facebook going to IPG, at a valuation around $500m, and;
• the two agreements were separate.

This will let me take both IPG and Facebook a lot more seriously down the line.