Social score: Bing 2 , Google 1.5.
But the game is still on. At the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco yesterday, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg left the door open to a potential deal. Event host John Batelle noted that the deal with Microsoft, which owns 1.6% of Facebook, was non-exclusive, and asked whether there was potential for a Google deal in the future.
“We do have a partnership strategy,” Sandberg smiled. “We have an open platform and we want to work with lots of people across the Web.”
“That was not a no.” Batelle returned.
“Nor was it a yes, technically,” was Sandberg’s mild reply. The deal with Google is a matter of time and terms, it seems.
Facebook is now giving Bing access to its “everyone data,” that is, the data that its users opt to make 100% public.
Batelle also asked Sandberg about monetization plans for the Facebook Connect platform, which allows third party sites to integrate Facebook social data into its own pages, giving visitors information about how their connections use the site. Sandberg was also closed-lip on that one: “Right now our focus is to make Facebook Connect easier to use and working with partners to get really cool, really deep integrations… We’re not working on anything that puts monetization alongside that right now.”