Go Woody Wire

Brent Schlender aka the Grouchy Geek on CNN.com wrote an incredibly insightful article on Facebook’s decision to choose Microsoft as its global advertising partner.

Facebook could have chosen Google, Yahoo! or even Ask. However, as Schlender points out, Microsoft is a much better fit considering Facebook’s long-term business model. They actually want to become the premier social software platform for hosting web applications.

As a partner, Microsoft can help them understand software, integration, and of course monetization. Something many web applications struggle with. They also hold the keys for getting into nearly 99% of businesses in the U.S.

Coinciding with Microsoft’s investment is a new set of business communication tools they call, Unified Communications. In their own words,

“Microsoft unified communications technologies use the power of software to deliver complete communications–messaging, voice, and video–across the applications and devices that people use every day.

Integrating the experiences you associate with the telephone–phone calls, voice mail, and conferencing–into the work you do on a computer–documents, spreadsheets, instant messaging, e-mail, calendars–has the power to fundamentally change the way the world works.

We believe unified communications will transform business in the coming decade in the same way e-mail changed the business landscape in the 1990s.

When phone services become software, are managed by a server, and are delivered to desktop applications, many interesting things happen.”

Basically, while Apple was busy developing the iPhone, Microsoft was developing a plan to become the phone – and email, instant messaging, video conferencing – and dare I say it, a bunch of corporate social networks. Thus it made sense for them to align themselves early with the most forward thinking social network in the world.