Microsoft employees and even executives are very active on Facebook - over 13,000 of them have a profile on the service.
By comparison, Google has 5,000 employees with profiles, although Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt are noticeably absent (Marissa Mayer does have a profile, however, and actively adds friends). Yahoo has just 3,500 employee profiles, and none of the most senior execs participate.
On a percentage of employees basis, Google (47% of employees are on Facebook) and Yahoo (31%) are more active than Microsoft (17%). But the most senior people at Microsoft, including Bill Gates (Chairman), Steve Ballmer (CEO), Ray Ozzie (Chief Software Architect), all have profiles and appear to be very active on the service. Ray Ozzie has dozens of friends and is actively trying out different Facebook applications. In the last couple of days, he added and then removed a search app, for example.
Bill Gates may be taking an even deeper dive. In addition to having a Facebook profile, he also maintains a profile on HotOrNot that can be viewed on Facebook (HotOrNot confirmed that this is the real Bill Gates).
Since it’s unlikely that Bill, Steve and Ray have a lot of leisure time for social networking and online dating, I wonder why they’re spending all this time on the site?
The two companies have a long term advertising deal, of course. But the success (or not) of that deal has little to do with Microsoft execs spending time on the site. It looks to me like they are genuinely testing the service, perhaps in the hope of making an aggressive acquisition move, or trying to emulate Facebook’s success.
Fake profiles.!!
Perhaps they have an assistant who monitors their social networking profiles like many politicians do.
Yeah. No way Bill Gates has time for that. Although, if he does, that is one of the coolest things I’ve heard in a while.
Well, My guess is that, this has to do with the advertising deal that Microsoft has made with Facebook.
Oh it think it could be any of the following:
a. To acquire it
b. To study and clone it
c. To eventually bid for ad space
e. ALL OF THE ABOVE
d. none of the above
HOT or NOT he is very green($$$$).
I think I read it somewhere that Ray Ozzie is actually a mentor/advisor to Zuck…
Here is my prediction– MS is going to buy FB for about $8 to $10 billions next year!!!
Facebook, MySpace, etc. are all a very interesting study in quasi-anonymity and how it applies to group behavior. I imagine they are studying it because it is a technical phenomenon.
buy buy BUY!
sold sold SOLD!
As #7 (Colin) says, they may want to study the technical and social phenomenon.
Or perhaps they already learned they need to show Microsoft and themselves as social, cool, “open to the conversation” people (and company in the long run). That’s my guess.
If it was a matter of buying or not buying it was more logical not to show such an interest on the platform.
Yeah, because when you email Steve Jobs, he really really really does email you back. And when I wrote to Michael Jordan, that really really really was his signature.
Mike;
You can change your privacy on FB so that you are invisible to searches, and you do not appear to outsiders or on friend’s contact lists. I have a few friends that I am able to see on my profile, but others can not see them… nor search for them.
In other words, they are invisible to the FB community - they have to add you.
Alaska;
They would know it’s the real Bill Gates based on the confirmation of his e-mail address. It’s easy to say you’re “bill@microsoft.com” … but it’s a little harder to actually click a link that is sent to that address
Hi Micheal,
Excellent question!
We have great project on the Web Operating System. But way before they are born they maybe death. WebOS, Jooce, Goowy, or G.ho.st offer free registration, IM, email, storage, etc. So does Facebook plus:
1. Many developers have compared Facebook to Microsoft in its early days. Last week I checked 2,700 applications and these week are 3,000. When we talk about aggregation, this is a example to follow. So, If WebOS comes with IM, Mail, and storage, Facebook comes with thousands more.
2. Portability, when I login at my facebook account, if I am in Moscow, New York or Buenos Aires, it does not matter: all my friends, my music, my files, my notes and my “wall-to-wall” notes follow me. Same with Webtop concept but with my community.
3. Facebook is beginning to syndicate Friends Status Updates and Friends Posted Items via RSS. Now we have a dashboard with the things or people I care with one line or one word of their status. Is this what Google customization opening page wanted to get? Yes, but again, at Facebook with my group people.
4. To me Facebook in less than I year will incorporate IM, mail capabilities outside Facebook. No need to be a rocket scientist to guess this. But Facebook must be working in the reverse solution: converting every Google, Hotmail, and Yahoo user account into a profile.
Facebook could be the unicorn so looked for by Bill Gates. I remember when he retired as a CEO, he wanted to be the architect of the new Internet operating system.
Mario Ruiz
@ http://www.oursheet.com
Oh my god, I want to send a friend request to Bill Gates on FaceBook. I’ve only got the four friends on there right now, and it would be awesome to have Gates as number 5.
Alaska: I get your point, but email Jobs actually does work. I mean, I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of him replying, but a lot of people have sent emails to steve@apple or whatever it is, when they’re having issues, and things get worked out pretty quick after doing that.
My son, who is in high school, tells me kids in his class are tiring of My Space, and don’t really like Face Book. He also tells me kids hate the advertising intrusion on both, and also on youtube. When he tells me, ” it used to be fun and kinda cool, but it’s boring now’, it tells me times may be a changing. HE ditched his iPod for another device.
I don’t see Microsoft buying FB. They still have a very large professional business base worldwide and I don’t think they will be taken as serious as they are now if the bite the social networking apple ( no pun intended)
Mario, re:”2. Portability, when I login at my facebook account, if I am in Moscow, New York or Buenos Aires, it does not matter: all my friends, my music, my files, my notes and my “wall-to-wall” notes follow me. Same with Webtop concept but with my community.”
This is AMAZING stuff that Facebook is doing. How long do you think it will take for MySpace to do something similar. I ask because I love MySpace, but I can only access it from a computer at my friends house because that’s where I signed up for it.
Why so Active ???
BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE REAL JOBS !
It happens in any big Corp — especially ones with lame products/services…
here is another of my wild prediction– MS buys FB, and one day Mark Zuckerberg will run the MS empire when Bill, Ray, and Steve are all retired.
Never say never, right?
Does Bill’s wife know about that Hot or Not profile? o:
Hey, execs have friends, too.
Dollars to doughnuts that the majority of C-level execs with profiles on Facebook are not running their own profiles. It’s an admin, or someone from their PR agency, or some similar underling.
Interesting. Firstly, I am staggered that I actually beat TechCrunch to an idea for a story.
Secondly, Bill must be having a purge as the number of Microsoft employees on Facebook has actually fallen by 5,000 in just 5 weeks.
A month or so ago a friend returned from a benefit dinner with some MS Execs in attendance. I was surprised to hear they were so high on Facebook until I remembered that they’d paid dearly for their ad inventory.
The other thing to consider is that they are having trouble recruiting the best and brightest grads, so this might be, in part, a way to boost their reputation and better integrate with overall tech community. I noticed that a friend who is an MS employee has been joining a lot of student & professional development related groups.
Given all the whispers I’ve heard, I’m still not convinced that they aren’t considering an acquisition, and prepared to pay a pretty penny if they have to go to through with it.
Its funny that so many Microsofties are on Facebook. I remember some researchers at Microsoft doing an analysis of the social relationships at Google in order to identify the different working groups. I think they may actually have used the results in some of their attempts to recruit people out of Google.
Some of the PR folks and Execs at Joost are on Facebook and also part of the Joost group and are using it as a marketing tool .
http://watchjoost.blogspot.com/ ‘
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7045041320
@Robert Dewey,
My point was, it sounds cute to hear that Billy G uses facebook, it most likely is just a couple MS interns tasked onto a team to using it for PR purposes. Steve Jobs has a personal assistant that replies to certain emails and on top of that a separate PR team to handle excessive loads.
Also, those Michael Jordan signatures? Might have just been some kid scribbling on a piece of paper.
I think MS have to buy it if they can. They are not present in this space and I would think they would want to be.
It would be a good way to target the students that use it with their products and imagine them launching an office facebook app so students could spend all their time on there.
Who the F are you to judge whether Bill should spend time on Facebook or hotorot. Just coz’ you turn out to be a workaholic (maybe) dosen’t mean that everybody turns out the same !
The number in Google and Microsoft’s networks are hugely inflated by their interns who join the network and then leave the company after a few months. The numbers quoted here don’t represent the actual number of full time employees on Facebook.
How does Bill Gates NOT have the time for this? He’s the (2nd?) richest man in the world and, basically, doesn’t have a job except for throwing money in the direction of Africa. WTF else does he have to do?
Ah Mike — I love it when you prove to us all that you are still just a 2nd rate gossip columnist, at least give us some good gossip. Slow news day?
Strategic alliance, Facebook isn’t for sale.
http://bootstrapeconomist.org/.....-intranet/
“Since it’s unlikely that Bill, Steve and Ray have a lot of leisure time for social networking and online dating, I wonder why they’re spending all this time on the site?”
If I was CEO of a large company that wouldn’t stop me from wasting a little bit of time every day on Facebook or Youtube.
Which Bill Gates profile are you referring to?
This is not true for the ceo but regular employees thats different story.
I’m glad to see Microsoft execs using a bunch of web services. (Assuming these aren’t fake profiles.) Just like I would hope that they play around with Adobe, OpenOffice, and Linux, I would hope that they play with Facebook, MySpace, et. al.
Hey am I on Facebook?
Google and Yahoo want to develop their own SNS so that higher executives should not be on FB. MS is a FB’s close partner now, top guys are active on FB (with some assistants’ work).
Great analysis Mike, Microsoft is certainly on to something.
I wonder if they are willing to buy Facebook. I am sure that for Microsoft is a great way to establish themselves in the online industry. They have enough cash to shell out more than $30-40 billion for Facebook.
“If I was CEO of a large company that wouldn’t stop me from wasting a little bit of time every day on Facebook or Youtube.”
If you were…let’s see when you actually become the CEO of a $266 billion dollar company and face competition from everywhere.
It is the real Bill Gates, by the way.
And, yes, I was Faceslammed by Bill. Here’s the details: http://scobleizer.com/2007/08/.....ill-gates/
I asked Steve Jobs at the latest Apple press conference if he was on Facebook. He answered “no.”
What’s really lame about this situation is that Microsoft’s LiveID (or Passport or whatever they’re calling it this year) doesn’t work with Facebook.
Michael,
I’m a little shocked by your writing, how come you did’nt talk about or did’nt raise any questions about the veracity of the profiles?! Was it you or someone else writing on behalf of you?
Michael,
Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Ray Ozzie are paying close attention to Facebook because Facebook is going to be worth $100 billion by the time of its Q4 2008 IPO when they go over 200+ million users.
Even more important to the troika than Mark Zuckerberg joining the billionaire list is the fact that Microsoft has the potential to leverage the market disruption created by the world’s first mainstream Social Operating System to bypass Google in Advertising (just like they used the market disruption created by the world’s first mainstream Graphical Operating system to bypass Lotus 123 with Excel).
You can read my full post about this comparison between Windows and Facebook in the “Triumph of the Nerds — Part Deux” article available here:
http://blog.adonomics.com/
You can read the details about my other views on Facebook in my “Official Altura Ventures & AppFactory Facebook Investment Fund
Group (see http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2392191727)” including the discussion board post entitled “Is Facebook worth $100 Billion? Yeah and Here’s Why:“ (see http://www.facebook.com/topic......topic=2793).
To summarize the points in my post:
1. Facebook will grow to 200 million users by Dec. 2008. I base this on what they’ve already accomplished:
FB Year 1 (Dec. 31, 2004) — 1 million users
FB Year 2 (Dec. 31, 2005) — 5 million users
FB Year 3 (Dec. 31, 2006) — 12 million users
FB Year 4 (Apr. 26, 2007) — 20 million users
FB Year 4 (Aug. 1, 2007) — 30 million users
FB Year 4 (Dec. 31, 2007) — 50+ million users
FB Year 5 (June 6, 2008) — 100+ million users
FB Year 5 (Dec. 31, 2008) — 200+ million users
2. Facebook’s valuation will be around $500 per user. I base this on the multiple sources of revenue that will flow to them from:
2a. targetted brand advertising — their Yahoo play
2b. keyword driven search advertising — their Google play
2c. P2P e-commerce transactions — their eBay play
2d. B2C e-commerce transactions — their Amazon play
2e. Industry Alliance transactions — their Microsoft vs. Google play
3. Facebook has more developers working on building cool apps for its social operating system than any other single piece of software on the planet. I base this on the 80,000+ application developers that have are currently writing apps for the platform. As I described on video (see http://facereviews.com/2007/08.....cebook-vc/) , this puts Google in the position of playing catch-up to Facebook in a world where Microsoft has the inside track to managing Facebook’s advertising business.
Thanks,
Lee Lorenzen
CEO, Altura Ventures — the 1st Facebook-only VC
This is what TechCrunch should have more of–investigative reporting. Can you please keep pursuing this story?
The MSFT brass are spending so much time on FB, the GOOG execs are not. If I was a GOOG shareholder, I’d be worried. Are leaders living in a closet? What technology visionary wouldn’t spend a fair amount of time on Facebook? It’s clearly becoming as important to the Internet as search. This would be like back in ‘99 if folks at MSFT weren’t using Google on a daily basis. Maybe if they had they would have figured out search(or bought GOOG) before they became such a competitive threat.
Full Disclosure: I own MSFT and don’t own any GOOG. But my giant portfolio of 4 MSFT shares in my ShareBuilder account aren’t enough to bias my blog commenting.
Well, this is just to gain popularity to include names of big execs. Microsoft has strategy that if they found something good in market they try to make like that but not indulge in that.
Look for MSFT to throw an offer on the table; I can’t imagine they are making anything from their search deal — it’s so well hidden on FB. But I don’t think MSFT will throw enough money on the table and FB will announce an IPO next summer, then go IPO in the fall (when the kiddies jump on), then it’ll be a great cyclical stock like AMZN (buy in October for the Nov/Dec holiday shopping madness, dump after Q4 earnings come out) — FACE (buy in July, sell after Q4 when new rush of kids get in).
I stand corrected, over 50% of GOOG employees use FB while only 25% of MSFT people do. Maybe the Execs are private.