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July 24th, 2008 at 1:32 pm

CNBC is reporting that Microsoft and Facebook have signed a search and advertising deal. The partnership involves integrating Microsoft Live Search on Facebook, which will include the software giant’s search advertising. Microsoft Live Search will launch on Facebook sometime this fall, according to the report.

Currently, Microsoft serves contextual advertising on Facebook, and the company made a $240 million investment in the social network back in October. At the time, it was unclear whether or not search was part of the deal.

MySpace has a similar deal with Google, which includes a guaranteed $900 million in revenue to the News Corp-owned social network. That partnership has had lukewarm results so far for Google, who has indicated during its quarterly earnings announcements that it is struggling to effectively monetize social networking inventory.

These deals are par for the course for most big online media companies. For example, in addition to its MySpace deal, Google powers search on sites like AOL and The Washington Post, while Yahoo powers search at former Web 1.0 darling Lycos. While most people ultimately keep searching via their service of choice, the law of huge numbers means that at least a few people will do their Google, Yahoo, or Live searches via a partner site.

So far, the MySpace deal is just a simple implementation of Google search under MySpace branding. What will be interesting to see is if the social networks begin to do innovative things with social search by leveraging your friends list. Yahoo recently released Build Your Own Search Service (BOSS) to allow developers to do just that, with Me.dium signing on as an initial partner.

Source:Mashable!

So you’re a real-estate agent or a homeowner toughing a sales effort on your own, and you are interested in going above and beyond the requisite listing of photos, overview, and geo-tagging. Maybe you want to work in a little video slideshow for shoppers. If so, PropertyPreviews is a free service that automates the process of creating such clips without need for any software downloads. Just upload your images, include any relevant information, and the service will do the rest.

It can also send your video tour off to a number of real estate listing services and video sharing sites of your choosing, including Trulia, Zillow, and YouTube. Agents can place videos on their own websites if so desired.

Though PropertyPreviews general manager Jeff Harris touts the service as offering a sort of 24-hour open house, suffice it to say that you won’t be awed by its powers. Magic is minimal, but for a good number of users, it’s likely to do what it needs to regardless. It cost nil to the user, after all, so if anything, it provides just a bit of extra window dressing if desired.

A word of warning. While PropertyPreviews proudly displays generic samples on its front page, it does so with an unfortunate selection of music. What’s more, it appears that the service itself mandates the addition of an audio track. Silent playback isn’t an option. So choose wisely!