It seems Microsoft’s pledge of going for advertising is not just talk to get the shareholders to believe they’re doing something about Google. Microsoft have just finished an exclusive deal which social networking site Facebook to provide all the advertising on the Facebook site.

Facebook calls itself “online directory that connects people through social networks”, which sounds very much similar to the ideas of Myspace, Bebo etc, but Facebook seems to focus on connecting people through schools and colleges and places of work. Now I’m not really a fan of social networking, so I don’t know whether this is how Myspace et al do things, but I was under the impression that other sites rely less on physical location to connect members (although most services do offer it).

Interestingly, Facebook isn’t exactly a showcase of Microsoft technology underneath. The site runs on PHP, one of the most popular server-side solutions (which is open source). Obviously Microsoft are banking on the Facebook becoming at least a fairly popular service.

This news comes only shortly after Google announced a deal with Myspace to offer full Google search capability and integration throughout Myspace.

Social networking, it seems, is big business.

[via]