Sheryl Sandberg joins Facebook to make use of Microsoft's $240 Million

AllFacebook.com is reporting that the ex-vice president of Global Online Sales & Operations for Google is heading to Facebook. The strategic implications are obvious, but I will say that from personal experience, becoming a VP at Google means you've got the intelligence and the drive. It was the number 1 place to work for top candidates, two years ago.

But according to an unnamed source involved in Microsoft hiring, these days, the toughest part is attracting the golden candidates away from Facebook. The potential there is unlimited, and the possibility of growth means if you get in now, you're set. They're recruiting top notch candidates, across the board. All the while making connections with Apple and of course, Microsoft.

Specifically, she's in to make Microsoft's investment pay off.

How, you ask? I'll quote SearchEngineWatch:

If there's any question about her charge at Facebook, the answer lies in the Supernova Conference in San Francisco last year. Ms. Sandberg was featured in a Spotlight solo presentation.

Her topic: "Google cracked the code on monetizing search advertising. Where is advertising heading next?"

Google shakes up the social networking world with Open Social

So unless you were hiding under a rock last week, you would've noticed that Google announced the launch of their "Open Social" platform, creating an open standard for creating applications that run on any social networking system that implements Open Social. Several high-profile social networking companies were mentioned as partners in the announcement, including Orkut, LinkedIn, Hi5, Friendster, Salesforce.com, Oracle, iLike, Flixster, RockYou, and Slide.

What does this mean for application developers?

Well, this is great news, first of all. The movement towards an open standards-based API for application development will help alleviate the concerns many developers had about Facebook and it's walled-garden approach to application development. This also expands the market for all application developers, as one application can be developed for a plethora of "container" social networking sites.

The floodgates that Facebook opened with the launch of their Developer's API have now been smashed open, expanding the application development market a great deal.

What does this mean for Facebook?

This is both good and bad for Facebook. Bad, of course, since their control over the reigns of application development are being loosened (somewhat). They still have a stranglehold on the market, but a viable alternative has now been created, backed by a solid company (Google) with an open standards-based approach that developers crave.

On the other hand, this still may be good news for Facebook. The Application Development scene has been blown wide open. If there wasn't already enough incentive for developers to start looking into social networking application development, this announcement just blew the doors wide open. The pie is only growing bigger, and Facebook stands to profit immensely.

Where have MySpace and Yahoo been lately?

Um, yeah... good question.