Facebook and Microsoft Expand Strategic Alliance
5 Comments Published by Rodney Rumford October 24th, 2007 in Facebook, Facebook News.
Facebook News Release: Microsoft and Facebook Expand Their Alliance. Microsoft to take equity stake in Facebook; companies expand advertising deal to cover international markets.
This is really great news and it looks like Microsoft beat out Google in the negotiations to claim an ownership stake in Facebook!
Facebook and Microsoft Corp. today announced that Microsoft will take a $240 million equity stake in Facebook’s next round of financing at a $15 billion valuation, and the companies will expand their existing advertising partnership. Under the expanded strategic alliance, Microsoft will be the exclusive third-party advertising platform partner for Facebook, and will begin to sell advertising for Facebook internationally in addition to the United States. Financial terms were not disclosed.
“We are pleased to take our Microsoft partnership to the next level,” said Owen Van Natta, vice president of operations and chief revenue officer at Facebook. “We think this expanded relationship will allow Facebook to continue to innovate and grow as a technology leader and major player in social computing, as well as bring relevant advertising to the more than 49 million active users of Facebook.”
“Making this investment and expanding this partnership will position Microsoft and Facebook to better take advantage of advertising opportunities around the world, and is a great win for not only for our two companies, but also our collective users and advertisers,” said Kevin Johnson, president of the Platforms & Services Division at Microsoft. “We have partnered well over the past year and look forward to doing some exciting things together in the future. The opportunity to further collaborate as advertising partners is a big reason we have decided to take an equity stake, and is a strong statement of our confidence in the long-term economics of this partnership.”
Facebook continues to experience strong growth both in the U.S. and international markets; 59 percent of Facebook’s users are outside the U.S. With an average of 250,000 new users registering each day, Facebook continues to be one of the most-trafficked sites on the Internet.
On Aug. 22, 2006, the companies announced a U.S.-only strategic alliance that named Microsoft the exclusive provider of standard banner advertising on Facebook using Microsoft’s digital advertising solutions and the Microsoft® adCenter platform. In early 2007, the terms were extended to 2011.
UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal also has some nice coverage of the Facebook Microsoft Alliance.
Technorati Tags: facebook, microsoft, facebook microsoft
5 Responses to “Facebook and Microsoft Expand Strategic Alliance”
- 1 Trackback on Oct 24th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Excellent move by Microsoft, very aggressive and forward and it put Google on the offensive (which is where you want them to by if you are either Microsoft or Yahoo!). Microsoft gives their quarterly report tomorrow, bet their Directors are gonna be sitting pretty http://www.newsvisual.com/newsvisual/2007/10/microsoft-diver.html
Eek Facesoft is watching you! All this talk of contextual ads based on my social stream is Minority Report creepy, so I’m talking about Paris Hilton’s recent morale boosting visit to Baghdad in my Facebook news feed and an ad for The Hilton Hotel, Tikrit pops up, boy that $9 as much as you can eat, suite and hooker deal sure looks tempting… er no.
Google had a lucky escape and Microsoft is the drunken Uncle at a wedding trying to kiss the bridesmaid.
Facesoft is watching you and when did we all think we could get everything for free? How about we all paid $1 per week for Facebook, so that’s $1 x 40 million per week, a tidy income… I vent my spleen and discuss my dreams being interpreted by a virtual psychotherapist serving me real life pop-up ads for lady shavers over at Fat Man.
Adam
Anyone remember how Yahoo valued Facebook at $1 billion about a year ago? I found this story about how Yahoo today now believes Facebook just isn’t for them:
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2007/10/jerry_yang_spea.html?chan=top news_top news index_businessweek exclusives
It’s an intersting read. I kind of agree with Yang (Yahoo CEO).
The link in my last comment got mangled, so here is a better link to the Yahoo Jerry Yang story regarding Facebook:
http://tinyurl.com/23ds8r