Facebook and Microsoft have announced a deal under which Microsoft will take a $240 million stake in Facebook's next round of funding, which will value Facebook at $15 billion. Microsoft will be Facebook's "exclusive third-party advertising platform partner" and will also sell Facebook's international advertising.
The press release is curiously phrased--does "next round of funding" mean there are other partners investing as well? That would be an unexpected twist. We'll find out more when Facebook and Microsoft hold their conference call at 2pm PST. We'll listen in. Check back here for updates.
Update: So far, the conference call is more notable for what Microsoft and Facebook are not answering rather than what they are. For example they dodged who else was in the running for this financing deal or what might have happened with Google, whether or not there will be other investors in the round, and whether Facebook might integrate into any Microsoft software aside from the ad platform. Both parties are not disclosing much more than what the press release says. Marketing-speak is ruling the day: this is a win, win, win for Microsoft, advertisers, and Facebook users. Win win win. Blah blah blah.
Quoth Kevin Johnson, president of the platforms and services division at Microsoft: "Unfortunately both parties have agreed certain specifics of the business arrangement and the way we're working together we've decided not to disclose at this time." [sic]
Update 2: The call has ended without much more added. The last question taken probed whether Microsoft was going to use Facebook's personal data on its 50 million users to better serve targeted ads on sites outside of Facebook. Johnson danced around with jargon, but the jist of his answer was yes.
The other interesting tidbit was that Facebook says third party application developers can continue to monetize their ads with any ad network. We'll have to wait until Facebook's November 6 announcement to see how startup ad networks will fare against Facebook's new product.
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