With all the “social network” (social networking) websites and Web 2.0 chatter going on today, I found this article of great interest.  I do have an account at Facebook but like myspace.com when it was in it’s infancy, I thought FaceBook.com was for college kids.  Maybe there’s something more to the story?

Microsoft won its latest sparring match with Google on Wednesday, securing a deal to buy 1.6 percent of the social networking site Facebook for $240 million - a move that values the young site at $15 billion and bolsters a new model of online advertising.

The highly anticipated partnership in the trendy virtual world of social networking suggests that:

– Microsoft has emerged as a rival of Google, which reportedly also had been wooing Facebook and already has a $900 million advertising deal with MySpace, Facebook’s biggest competitor.

– Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg looks prescient for refusing to sell the Palo Alto startup to Yahoo for an estimated $1 billion last year. Wednesday’s deal sets the worth of the 23-year-old, who owns a 20 percent share, at an estimated $3 billion.

For the rest of the story, go to http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/10/25/MNQPSVHG7.DTL