Facebook Inc., said Tuesday, received an investment of $200 million from Russia’s Digital Sky Technologies that values the networking service at $10 billion.

Digital Sky will buy $200 million in preferred stock, gaining a 2 percent stake in the company, Palo Alto, California-based Facebook said today in a statement.

Facebook’s value has dropped $5 billion from October 2007 when Microsoft paid $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake.

Facebook’s founder and chief executive, Mark E. Zuckerberg, said that the Microsoft investment was made at the “absolute peak of the market” and that it was just a part of Facebook’s partnership with Microsoft, which includes advertising and search agreements.

The world’s largest social-networking service, which makes money from online advertising, is using its dominance to boost sales and attract investors during the worst ad market for Internet companies since the dot-com bust.

The decreasing traffic requires Facebook to spend more on data centers, server rooms and web site management.

Despite a tough economic environment, Zuckerberg said Facebook's revenue numbers are up, the company is on a track towards creating a self sustaining business.

Digital Sky Technologies is a prominent Internet investor in Russia and Europe, where it owns stakes in Web companies that account for 70 percent of all page views on the Russian-speaking Internet, according to the firm.

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