Microsoft has acquired a 1.6% stake in the increasingly popular social networking site, Facebook. The deal, finalised at $240 million, in effect, values Facebook at close to $15 billion dollars !! Wow, ithat is amazing for a site that didn’t even exist till 3-4 years ago.

However, what will give the Redmond folks more pleasure is the fact that it was a rare occasion when they managed to beat Google at something. Apparently, Facebook was not keen on an offer from Google, or even Yahoo last year.

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, a 23 year old student from Harvard, and has now got in excess of 40-50 million registered users, enough to give it’s rival, MySpace some serious thinking to do.

I’ve been using it for some time now, and amidst the plethora of other such sites, this one is definitely thriving on the ‘fun’ element, what with Vampires, Zombies, Maps, Quizzes, Compare Friends and other such applications which really get you hooked on to it. Among other things, you can integrate your blog posts, as well as other site profiles like Orkut, which ensure you never have a reason to leave the site.

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