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Microsoft invests $240M in Facebook, as Facebook develops ad product By Doug Sherrets 10.24.07 Updated Microsoft has snagged a deal to invest $240 million into popular social network Facebook, valuing the company at $15 billion — a 1.6 percent stake. Microsoft has also agreed to advertise on Facebook in international markets. We listened in on a well-staged official press conference call that the two companies did this afternoon — you can read most of the same information in the press release. Here are some highlights: Microsoft needs the international ad agreement because Facebook says nearly 60 percent of its 50 million active users are based outside of the US. Facebook also claims to be gaining 200,000 new users per day, worldwide.

Facebook’s emergence into a major Internet player has been compared to Google’s rocketship rise a few years ago.

作为读写网 Facebook 周活动的一部分，我在为大家带来Facebook平台下的最优秀的Apps。有将近1800个Apps可以在Facebook平台下运行，这给 Facebook带来了巨大的成功。在这些应用程序中最为流行的十个Apps拥有超过4600万用户。我将在这1800个Apps中精选出最优秀的50 个，分为5类（每个类别10个）。这是一个完全主观的列表，因此并不是人人都会同意我的选择，我欢迎那些持有不同意见的人在你的回复中说出你的选择和理 由。 在Facebook的平台下有很多功能重复的应用程序（例如，最少有十个apps是做图书索引的!），甚至与有些重复的应用程序连名字都是一样的。在这种情况下，我会在这些清单中列出对于我来说最突出最优秀的apps。今天的清单是有关“工作”方面的apps。

Monday, October 29, 2007 The Semantic Web Goes Mainstream Continued from page 1 By Kate Greene Print E-mail Audio » New! Listen - Flash Listen - MP3 Subscribe to podcast What is this? Powered by Share » Digg this Add to del.icio.us Add to Reddit Add to Facebook

Sharepoint, Among Other Upgrades October 17, 2007 — 08:18 PM PDT — by Kristen Nicole — Share This NewsGator, the RSS company, has announced at the Web 2.0 Conference that NewsGator Social Sites are now available for users to incorporate for business use. Social Sites is an add-on for the NewsGator Enterprise Server (NGES), which is a tool that businesses can use as a way to interact, share news, search for items and generally keep up with what’s going on in the company. Included in this launch is the support of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and 3.0. So now you can let your employees use NewsGator Social Sites for communicating in a circular manner around important information. Incorporate RSS feeds, profiles, self-published articles, tags and more into the network to be searched be employees. The syndication of content from SharePoint Server lets users keep up with updates from their desktop, email service or mobile device. Some other enhancements come in the way of actual social networking options. Profiles have been improved so that more relevant information is more readily available, making it easier to find people with the necessary area of expertise, for the necessary information. NewsGator has also recently launched its Facebook application.

NY-based Kaltura has received a good bit of buzz since I first reported about their presentation at the NY Video Meetup last April. Since then they have gone on to win the people's choice at Techcrunch40 and have launched a useful Facebook application. I had a chance to grab a coffee with co-founder Ron Yekutiel and here are my notes: Ron describes Kaltura as "wiki meets YouTube". He believes there is a movement going on from text publishing to video publishing and that collaboration in the video space is where Kaltura leads the pack. Kaltura is seeking to empower other social networks by their use of the Kaltura application. Ron says that while Kaltura.com is a destination site, the real power is how other sites use the tool within their framework. What I get about Kaltura is that small contributions can equal big productions where everybody has a vested interest in the final product. Ron spoke about four reasons people collaborate on video: For social progression and to see interaction Text is dead (Allen's note: I sure hope not!) The number of contributors help to decrease the barriers to contribution The swarm effect of advertising - he sees this as the new model where instead of a 1-1 advertising or many-many, companies will use collaboration to reach their desired customer The Kaltura team has four co-founders, two are in New York and the other two are in Israel. The team totals 25 people and are in Israel. From what I gather, the leadership of Kaltura might be the most educated group I have come across. Lots of post-graduate degrees from Ivy League schools. We spoke about the Kaltura business model which is largely based on rev share. It's an interesting model because it puts the trust in the sites using the application to report the income back as they use their own advertising not Kaltura's ad platform. For sites that don't have their own advertising platform, Kaltura can provide one with strong advertising players involved. Ron left me with some juicy bits about the future for Kaltura but he asked me not to share them at this time. He said they are coming very soon and as soon as I can share with you, I will.