Microsoft's deal with Facebook could become hampered

Facebook, the website network built for and designed to connect high-school and college students, is treading on interesting ground these days. Back on August 24th the company signed an agreement with Microsoft for the computer software maker to supply and deliver all the advertisements that are displayed on the Facebook website. This is akin to the agreement between MySpace.com and Google recently, whereby Google will perform basically the same function by providing search functionality and related advertising across the MySpace.com website property.

Facebook is now releasing an RSS-lookalike function that will combine user profiles and related information into a "news feed" format that will, if adopted in great strides, probably cause less actual page viewing throughout Facebook's website. It will also send consumers of the Facebook website to a feed page, not a website page, where potentially less page views and advertisements will be seen. Oops -- less advertisements will be seen? That sounds fishy to me. I wonder how Microsoft would respond to this.

Facebook, however, may decide to embed advertising into its "news feeds" for condensing user profile information. This would be the sensible thing to do, although it must proceed carefully to not alienate consumers and users of that new feature. With 9 million registered users and 14.4 million user visits claimed in July, Facebook.com has a meaty section of advertising market targets.

But as always I question the exact measurement of what constitutes "registered users." Did Facebook.com see 14.4 million "unique" visitor pageviews in July, or did the same 1 million users view 14 pages each throughout the month? When ad rates are drawn up data like this is extremely important but usually glossed over. Microsoft is hoping for unique advertising opportunities I would think, not consistent users who at some point may actually ignore ads.