It could be a beautiful relationship. Autumn and spring. Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp, which owns Ticketmaster among other properties, is in discussions with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, the social network for college students.

A spy at the Foursquare conference, an off-the-record event for media and technology bigwigs in New York, reports: btw, Diller was apparently getting hot and heavy with Zuckerberg at Foursquare. The hot and heavy was an unfortunate expression, I'm assuming, rather than an insinuation.

IAC CEO Barry Diller, though married, is the most prominent gay executive in the internet sector. Zuckerberg has the world's most comprehensive database of college students, and has a sense of adventure. Diller is known to have a business interest in young men. And none of that has anything to do with anything.

Most significant: Zuckerberg was spotted in conversation with Jason Rapp, IAC's SVP for mergers and acquisitions. That's not something you do, in front of a gossipy crowd of dealmakers, unless you're shopping the company, or want to be seen to be on the market. Alternatively, Zuckerberg, who's 22, may just have been explaining the virtues of sandals at a sweaty conference venue.

Facebook, the largest social network site after Myspace, is one of the very few startups in heavy demand by giant media and tech companies. With Skype, Myspace and Youtube gone — to eBay, News Corporation and Google, respectively — a deal for Facebook is the only acquisition that would be seen as gamechanging.

And the megacorps are only interested in such transformative deals, the kind that get magazine covers, and bump the stock price. Facebook has been rumored as Yahoo's big acquisition, but it's no surprise that they're talking to IAC, and probably the other usual suspects, as well.

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