What does the Microsoft "partnership" with Facebook mean for users?
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Here's the key fact: Facebook's users are not its customers. They're the targets to which Facebook's customers aim advertising. In old media this was no big deal. But Facebook isn't just a "medium". It's a vast walled garden where the social activity of members and visitors constantly improves the ability of advertisers to &quot;target&quot; both. This is a Good Thing only  if it works for everybody &#151; including both those targeted as well as those doing the targeting. And if users are actually involved, they have some important questions:  What happens to my identity-related information? How is it used, and by whom? How much control do I have over my data (or data about myself) &#151; including what Facebook &quot;partners&quot; do with that data? \
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Tony Bibbs, in the wake of last week's surprise from Microsoft to Yahoo, has posted a few of his thoughts on the matter.   I woke up this morning to the news of a $44 billion buy-out offer from Microsoft for Yahoo!. This is being covered from all angles in various tech sites like Slashdot but I think the one angle I haven't seen yet is what does this mean for PHP?   He mentions the work that Microsoft and Zend have done to push PHP support on the OS (check out this email too) and he wonders what the final impact of it all could mean for the language - will things change drastically if Microsoft becomes a major player in the PHP world or would they stay behind the scenes and give the community the support it might need.
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Facebook has made a move to allow applications created on its site to run on other Web sites.The social network&#39;s new JavaScript client library, released on Friday, ends the restriction that prevented developers from running Facebook applications on other Web sites, the company announced.&quot;Since the library does not require any server-side code on your server, you can now create a Facebook application that can be hosted on any Web site that serves static HTML,&quot; wrote Facebook&#39;s Wei Zhu on the company&#39;s developers blog.Nick O&#39;Neill, a blogger at All Facebook, noted that Facebook&#39;s move to let developers extend its platform to outside sites is a significant one for the company.&quot;The public is now aware of the possibilities to leverage Facebook outside of the main site and that is big news,&quot; he wrote. &quot;Rather than building your applications strictly within Facebook, you can now extend the full functionality of the platform to your own Web site and leverage Facebook as the tool for managing members and their relationships. Want to build your own social gaming platform that resides on your own Web site but leverages the power of users&#39; Facebook relationships? Now you can!&quot;Sean Aune, a blogger at Mashable, noted that the move means that Facebook applications &quot;could possibly start popping up on ordinary Web sites and blogs any day now.&quot;Aune added that Facebook is looking to stem criticism for being like a &quot;walled garden in that things do go in but nothing comes out. It would appear that they made the first step last night in &#39;coming out&#39; as it were. Web apps will be able to use cookies to track the users when they are using the app in other places on the Internet. So, in theory, you could play a game on any site and your stats will still be tracked.&quot;Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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Microsoft is mulling an investment of up to 5.0 percent in the social networking site Facebook, a move that could set the stage for confrontation with rival Google, the Wall Street Journal reported.
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People who sign in to the newest social network won't be looking for dates or posting a list of their favorite movies. They will be searching for companies to invest in and listing their interests in areas like clean energy or enterprise software.
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By Anick Jesdanun  NEW YORK - The operators of the online hangout site Facebook.com wanted to help users save time by highlighting changes their friends make to their personal profile pages. Instead, the new feature has drawn complaints from thousands of users and even threats of a boycott.
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Microsoft Corp is talking to Facebook about buying a minority stake in the fast-growing online social network that could value the company at $10 billion or more, the Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site on Monday.
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Google and Microsft Getting Close  Microsoft partnering with Google? Well sort of, an article released yesterday details the relationship between the two, and the use of Google Deskbar in Microsoft's Partner Pack for Windows, "a collection of Microsoft and third-party products released last week that Microsoft describes on its Web site ...
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft partners introduced to the company's software-plus-services strategy this week at its Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) applauded the plan, though they noted a few challenges as the company makes the transition from selling business software to offering more hosted and Web-based services. Microsoft used its annual partner conference, held this year in Denver, as a coming-out party for the strategy, with CEO Steve Ballmer outlining the plan for the first time after other executives have been discussing it publicly for more than a year. It seemed fitting that the company's top executive was the one to deliver the message to thousands of partners who play a significant role in the company's success. "I had no idea how partner-focused Microsoft really is," said Linda Gillis, a first-time attendee of the WPC and director of marketing for Squirrel Systems, a British Columbia company that provides restaurant point-of-sale software and services. This dependency on partners is a double-edged sword for Microsoft as it moves to a more Web-centric services business model versus the software license model it has used successfully for years. The company not only has to revise its strategy, remaining several steps behind competitors such as Google that started business on the Web and have no traditional software business, but it also has to help its partners make changes, too. To do this, Microsoft has been slowly ramping up its hosted services portfolio with a series of both consumer and business services. Executives also said at the WPC that those services will eventually become a full-fledged development platform, being both an OS and platform for new applications on the Web in a similar way that Windows is on the desktop. Gillis said that moving toward offering more services for business in addition to software is the right direction for both Microsoft and its partners. "The addition of services helps to create long-term customer relationships and a recurring revenue stream," she said. Most partners agreed with this sentiment, but some noted challenges that both Microsoft and partners will face as they make the switch. Jay Blazensky, vice president of business development for RingCentral, a Microsoft partner that provides voice services, including click-to-call, agreed that creating repeatable revenue is a definite benefit of the plan. But he noted that a challenge for Microsoft and its partners is to convince sales people to "forgo the larger up-front commission in lieu of a recurring annuity." "Those that buy into the model and are successful -- and patient -- have the opportunity to be enormously successful," he said. Another partner, Joe McDermott of Solution Canvas, said Microsoft's strategy of transitioning services in a calculated and deliberateÂ manner is the only way to make the change, which is necessary because it is what customers are demanding. Solution Canvas has built a service for small law firms using Microsoft's Office Live hosted service. "I think the strategy is the way forward strategically for both Microsoft and [partners] ... because in the end the marketplace will dictate and demand," he said. "End-users are who ultimately matter, and now that we have new Web technologies like AJAX and a rapid application development platform in Office Live, the barriers to powerful online applications are gone." At the same time, McDermott acknowledged that some Microsoft partners will have to learn new skills to take advantage of the new services approach, though the company's "considered pace" for moving to services will help them in that endeavor. While McDermott praised the technologies that enable more hosted services, one of them -- reliable access to broadband -- remains a hindrance not only to Microsoft's services plan but also its competitors' plans, RingCentral's Blazensky said. "It's an industry-wide challenge ... [but] it's maturing every day," he noted.
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Facebook will sell a $240 million minority stake to Microsoft, which as part of the deal will also expand the advertising services it provides to the social networking phenom, the companies said Wednesday in a statement.The size of the ownership stake Microsoft will take during Facebook&#39;s next round of financing puts Facebook&#39;s valuation at a whopping $15 billion.&#160;Google had reportedly been courting Facebook as well.In addition to the ownership piece, Microsoft will also extend its existing agreement to provide banner ads to Facebook in the U.S. With this deal, Microsoft will become Facebook&#39;s exclusive third-party ad platform as well as provide Facebook ads internationally.Facebook will likely devote the cash influx from its next financing round to bankroll the torrid growth it is expecting in the coming 12 months in usage and headcount.With about 300 employees now, Facebook expects to have about 700 a year from now, its CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg said last week at the&#160;Web 2.0 Summit.Meanwhile, the site is growing its usage at breakneck speed with about 250,000 new users registering every day.Founded in 2004, it currently has about 49 million active users today, up from 12 million in December. More than half of its active members return to the site daily. Some 59 percent of its users are outside the U.S.Earlier Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post reported that Facebook was in the final stages of making a decision on whether to do this deal with Microsoft or Google.For Microsoft, which hasn&#39;t attained as strong a position in online advertising as it had hoped and lags behind Google, landing this deal could be a major win, as long as Facebook proves to be as attractive an advertising vehicle as expected.The Journal reported later on Wednesday that Facebook expects a profit of about $30 million this year, on revenue of $150 million.Google and Yahoo provide ads for Facebook rival MySpace.Still, questions remain about social networking sites&#39; full potential for advertising, since most of their content is largely unregulated and created by millions of individuals, resulting often in material that is vulgar and objectionable.Facebook plans to share more ideas for revving up its advertising business on Nov. 6, at an event in New York to which it has invited what it calls &quot;its closest advertisers.&quot;&quot;As part of [the event], Facebook executives will discuss new approaches for advertising online,&quot; a Facebook spokeswoman said. &quot;We are not sharing any further details.&quot;Facebook, MySpace, and others are also under close scrutiny from law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad because sexual predators use social-networking sites to stalk and victimize people, in particular minors.The Journal first reported Google&#39;s and Microsoft&#39;s pursuit of the Facebook investment a month ago.
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Microsoft is in talks to buy a stake in the social networking site Facebook, the Wall Street Journal says.
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Microsoft has approached FacebookÂ in recent weeks proposing an investment that would give Microsoft a stake of up to 5 percent in the popular social-networking company, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft has approached Facebook&#160;in recent weeks proposing an investment that would give Microsoft a stake of up to 5 percent in the popular social-networking company, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
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Facebook wants to make its members' profiles portable, get a handle on software developers, launch ad platform.
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SAN FRANCISCO, May 24  /PRNewswire/ -- Facebook f8 Event -- Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive today announced two political applications built on Facebook Platform, a development platform that enables companies to integrate with the Facebook website and gain access to millions of users.
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College parties met business e-mail on Wednesday as Facebook said it is adding its social-networking platform to Research In Motion Ltd.&#39;s BlackBerry devices.T-Mobile will be the first carrier to build a Facebook application into the BlackBerries it sells, but BlackBerry users on any network will be able to download the application starting later Wednesday, Facebook Co-Founder and Vice President of Engineering Dustin Moskovitz said in a keynote address at the CTIA Wireless IT&#160;and Entertainment show in San Francisco.In the keynote, Moskovitz demonstrated taking a photo with a BlackBerry Curve device, adding tags to it and posting it to Facebook without even starting up the Facebook application. Other features include the ability to set special ringtones for Facebook events and invite friends to join Facebook through BlackBerry e-mail. But it&#39;s the open nature of Facebook&#39;s platform, which allows third parties to add new applications, that sets the company apart, Moskovitz said.The tie-up brings together the highest profile social-networking player, with almost 50 million active users, and an enterprise mobile pioneer vying for market share against Microsoft, Palm, Symbian, Apple, and other device and OS vendors. Executives of the two companies met at the CTIA Wireless Show in March in Orlando and agreed to work together, Moskovitz said. Openness is the key factor they had in common, he said.Starting from a base of thousands of colleges and high schools, Facebook last year opened its network to anyone, and members over 35 years old are the fastest-growing segment, Moskovitz said. RIM has its roots in corporate e-mail tied to specialized enterprise servers so the partnership could help Facebook grow right where it&#39;s catching up.The announcement came amid reports on Wednesday that&#160;Google and Microsoft are wooing Facebook.Facebook also announced a few other advances in the mobile arena, where it expects to have 4 million active users by the end of this month. There are Facebook services available on most major U.S. and Canadian carriers, and Moskovitz announced its first carrier deal outside North America, with O2 (U.K.) Ltd.One extension announced Wednesday lets users add information from third-party Facebook applications as a box in their mobile profiles. As an example, Moskovitz showed a user&#39;s profile that listed two causes he supports. Another extension lets organizations text-message Facebook members to send a text message in support of a cause. The member&#39;s support is immediately reflected on Facebook on the Web, he said.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft's Popfly technology for building mashups is now available in a public beta that allows users to publish applications built on it directly to the popular Facebook social-networking site.