For the past two months, the press has been full of rumours about who’ll buy a stake in Facebook, with Google and Microsoft taking the lead.

Anti Microsoft Facebook user groups proliferated.

Today the announcement has made the purchase official; “Microsoft has paid $240m (£117m) for a 1.6% stake in Facebook that values the hugely popular social networking site at $15bn (£7.3bn)”. Read the news on the bbc by following this link .

Facebook was founded in February 2004. It is one of the most popular social media sites with millions of active users of which there are over 1 million registered in the UK. Launched to service students only in September 06 it opened to the general public and it’s popularity soared. May 07 saw third-party developers creating applications.

Facebook will most likely use the money to increase staff and buy companies. The original talk was to sell 5%, and 1.6% is a lot less but will still inject substantial funds into the company.

It’s two main competitors are MySpace and Bebo on an international level. MySpace was bought two years ago by News Corp for $580m, whilst Bebo is said to be in talks with Yahoo.