Facebook News Roundup

Written by Nicole Ferraro

Friday, October 26. 2007 at 02:00 PM EDT 1 comment

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Facebook, as usual, has made the news this week, announcing its big investment by Microsoft; its quest for the perfect investors; a new Google (s)nooze application; and an app by Talkster which allows for free phone calls.

Microsoft plants its very expensive flag in Facebook soil: Microsoft has staked its claim in the Aggro Crag of the online social world, Facebook, thereby showing its GUTS against competitors Yahoo and Google. In non-Nickelodeon terms, Microsoft declared its $240 million investment in Facebook through which it will own 1.6 percent of the social networking site, thus valuing Facebook at $15 billion. Although this is a bunch of money, my mom tells me there's not enough money in the world to put a pricetag on me, thus rendering yours truly more expensive than Facebook. You heard it here first.

Microsoft alone cannot satisfy Facebook: The Wall Street Journal reports today that Facebook is in talks with other potential investors in an effort to keep the monies rolling in after its big Microsoft investment. With the new funding, Facebook plans to either finance new technology and hire employees, or purchase its CEO Mark Zuckerberg some puberty juice on eBay. (Go for the juice!)

Google News app on Facebook brings Google News to Facebook... Yay? Since Microsoft has marked its territory as partial owner of and sole advertiser on the Facebook front, Google has been stealthily moving in on the third-party app scene. The new Google News app makes it "easier" for users to read headlines from five preset categories and share stories with friends, as well as view stories their friends have shared. Users can also set up keywords as they can with regular Google news alerts. Since we can already easily do all of these things, I don't see too much of a point to this except to muddle up Facebook with the Google logo as much as possible.

Talkster lets you phone your phriends for phree! Talkster, an ad-supported online voice service, has launched an application on Facebook. With Talkster Free World Dialing, users can set up a list of friends on their Facebook profiles who they wish to call using the Talkster service. These calls can then be made from any sort of phone you want (e.g., cellphone, landline, cup-and-string combo) for free, because they are paid for by advertising. An interesting and perhaps revolutionary premise that I'm not entirely sure we're ready for yet. But, hey, go team.