Microsoft beats Google to win Facebook deal

After much speculation and rumours, looks like Microsoft has won the Facebook deal with a $240 million investment for 1.6% of the company. If Microsoft’s investment is indicative of what Facebook is worth, its valuation is somewhere in the ballpark of $15 billion. After having lost out on some other high profile deals such as MySpace, this will be great joy for Microsoft.

The deal makes Microsoft  the sole advertising provider for Facebook in the United States and internationally. With facebook’s mamoth user base, this definitely means serious business for Microsoft.

The crucial aspect is how Microsoft takes this forward and improves it’s partnership with Facebook. There is a lot of scope for Microsoft to leverage this deal and work on it and bring on enhancements which will enable some Microsoft Products such as Live Messenger and the Live platform as such to be integrated with Facebook.

My bet is that this is going to be a very interesting time for the Web 2.0 space as we see major players getting into this space.

Image Courtesy : Webcommunityforum

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