The rumor just a week ago was that Microsoft was about to take a five percent investment in social

networking site Facebook (a deal that would value the site at more than $10 billion).

Maybe it’s a negotiating ploy, but Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer today seems to have had a change of heart — or at least a heavy-hand on his checkbook. Balmer told the TimesOnline:

“I think these things [social networks] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people…There can’t be any more deep technology in Facebook than what dozens of people could write in a couple of years. That’s for sure.”

Wow. Hard to tell if that’s a valid reality check or a bit of wishful thinking on Microsoft’s part. Maybe a little of both.

Meanwhile, there’s been some interesting blogosphere comparison’s today between Facebook and Skype, the latter of which took a heavy beating of its own as eBay “wrote down” more than a billion dollars of its investment in Skype.

For instance, blog 24/7 Wall Street openly wondered whether Facebook is the New Skype?

What do you think? Can anything justify these pie-in-the-sky valuations? Or will the bottom fall out? Facebook received plaudits for rejecting Yahoo’s billion dollar offer last year. Will its current $10 billion valuation be a peak, or just a stepping-stone to Google-like levels? Let us know in the comments below.

Ever wondered if that suspicious guy in seat 22a might be a terrorist? Ask him to join a group chat on the matter. How about that attractive woman (or man, as may be the case) in seat 11b, might they be single? Shoot them a ping. How about the person in front of you that’s reclined their seat into your lap, could them maybe straighten up? You can always knee them until they get the message, but may a polite instant message would do the trick as well.

Check out this very well-done video from WSJ.com’s Tech Diary video blogger Andy Jordan, courtesy of the Journal’s All Things Digital blog, about a new group messaging application to be found on the seat-backs on Virgin America flights.Take a look at this odd yet compelling plane-app before it shows up on your flight as well someday.

Interesting post today from Marc Canter, who runs social networking vendor Broadband Mechanics on an important question for service providers to really come to terms with: is social networking a business or a feature?

Or taking it to the next level: will social networking startups like Facebook, MySpace and others be able to keep their users and build a business around them; or will social network components like friending, poking, friend content feeds and more proliferate as features that users expect, and take advantage of, in ALL the software they use in the future.

Canter’s vision, and the vision of his company, is the latter:

If you look at the top of our corporate web site - you’ll see the phrase ‘bringing social to software’. Its our positioning saying “sure we can buid you a stand alone social network - but we can also add social features to the web site you have already”.

This idea has important implications for carriers and service providers aiming to play Facebook catch-up. For starters, if social networking sites don’t survive as destination sites, there may be nothing to “catch-up to.” It would be like trying to catch-up with AOL or Prodigy. more