In an interview with the Times Online, Ballmer didn’t seem so sure Zuckerburbia deserves the jaw-dropping valuation given it. “There can’t be any more deep technology in Facebook than what dozens of people could write in a couple of years,” he said, noting that GeoCities, a community site acquired by Yahoo for $3 billion in 1999, offered much of what Facebook offers today. “I think these things are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a … faddish nature about anything that appeals to younger people.”

And that’s a truism worth noting. Before Facebook, there was TheGlobe.Com and before Mark Zuckerberg there was–shudder–Stephan Paternot.