New Zealand Web Design

Micosoft has invested $240,000 (USD) in Facebook in a deal valuing the social networking site at $15bn.

Facebook is enjoying meteoric growth, set to eclipse rival myspace in the very near future:

So, what’s behind the rapid growth and huge valuation? Facebook grew to popularity by offering college students exclusive access, you had to have a college email address to gain access to the site, and on joining would be included in your exclusive college network. This private, elite, space gave it’s users a feeling of exclusivity and a feeling of a community closely related to their real-life friends.

Once the community had been established Facebook opened up to the general public, and those users who had previously only been able to inlcude their college friends all expanded their networks rapidly bringing in millions of new users.

Of course, now they have lost their exlcusive ‘college-only’ appeal but the traffic stats seem to indicate that the party is a long way from over. Innovations such as opening up the platform to developers to add their own widgets and tools to the site have proved incredibly popular with users and the site is becoming almost a web within the web.

Although this new deal with Microsoft is for only a very small percentage of the company, the software giant is now engaged in the social media phenomenon and has secured an exclusive advertising deal in the process.