Microsoft will take a $240m stake in the popular social networking website Facebook as part of an expansion of the two firms' strategic alliance, the companies said last night.
Microsoft will become the exclusive third-party advertising partner for Facebook, and will begin to sell advertising for Facebook internationally in addition to the US, the companies said.
The deal came after reports of fierce competition between Microsoft and Google for an exclusive deal with Facebook, one of the fastest-growing websites worldwide.
The stake by Microsoft is part of Facebook's next round of financing and values the company at $15 billion.
In 2006, the two companies announced a US-only strategic alliance that named Microsoft the exclusive provider of banner advertising on Facebook. In early 2007, the terms were extended to 2011.
Facebook, along with MySpace, is one the fast-growing social networking website allowing people to exchange information, play games and otherwise interact, and has some five million members around the world.
A privately held company based in Palo Alto, California, Facebook sees an average of 250,000 new users registering each day and is one of the mostly heavily used sites on the Internet.
That has made it the second-largest social networking site behind MySpace, acquired by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation in 2005 for $580m.
