Interesting Tidbits/Notes from the Facebook/Microsoft Conference Call

While I was Twitter’in the conference call between Microsoft and Facebook yesterday, several comments came up that I thought were worth sharing as they are pretty interesting. I listened to the archive again and here are my notes. Comments come from Kevin Johnson, Microsoft and Owen Van Natta, Facebook. Let me just say this clearly – a "win" for advertisers will most likely never be a "win" for users – the two can’t coexist. It’s like two magnets – you can get them close, but they won’t touch. Kevin said over and over how much this is a win for both users and advertisers and while its a nice spin, it’s just not accurate.

• Kevin – there is potential future cooperation, 60% of Facebook users are outside the U.S.
• Owen – Facebook’s focus is on innovation and growth
• Kevin – This deal is a major advertising win for Microsoft and is a win-win-win with win for Microsoft in increasing inventory, win for Facebook with a strategic partnership with MS and a win for users/advertisers because of the increased value proposition (Allen: HA!)
• Kevin – "Round of financing that MS participated in" – could lead to today’s posts about additional funding from other investment groups
• Kevin regarding future partnership opportunities – Both parties agreed not to disclose certain parts of the agreement but sit back and watch because there is more to come
• Question from Caroline at CNET – "Are we going to see FB inside MS properties" – complete silence for 19 seconds – could be wondering who should answer or they weren’t sure how to answer – "We are only here today to talk about our exclusive 3rd party ad partnership"  (Allen: basically didn’t answer the question)
• Kevin – this deal builds on the aquantive acquisition and enables both companies to collaborate on new ad types
• Any minimums guaranteed? Kevin – we are very pleased on the economics of the partnership alone and the strategic partnership is another part – both companies have responsibilities in the relationship
• Owen – we are all about creating a richer experience for our users – we are doubling our user base every 6 months
• Owen – socialization of the Internet requires innovation between users and advertisers
• Owen – FB has an an salesforce (Allen: Why??)
• Brian from Adweek asked about targeting ads and whether they would use their profile data  – Owen – user trust is core to what we do and focus on at FB – we want to make sure our users don’t feel like we are violating their trust (Allen: yet yesterday I saw an ad for "30 yr old singles")
• Kevin added that at the end of the day this deal is a win for users and advertisers and that win is from highly relevant targeted ads and that deliver a great ROI – the program is all about delivering on that ROI.

Call ended.