A Social [AD] Network?
Over the past couple weeks there has been enormous amounts of buzz on Twitter. Just about every medium has an opinion about the service, how to use it, how to make money from it, and who will be using it, to name a few. Amongst all of this chatter we have seen a few stories (ok, more than just a few) about Facebook and it’s attempt to take it’s Terms of Service agreement to a different level. This week, we see that not only is Facebook looking to change how they handle content, but also they are looking at ways to generate revenue.
Like most social networking sites, currently Facebook doesn’t charge a fee for membership or for participation in the site. For the most part, you can use the entire site for free, including loads of applicaitons. The most recent interface shows ads that are sometimes related to some of your preferences, network, or information on your wall. I honestly don’t pay too much attention to them, so I’m sure they don’t really bring in that much money.
Now, Facebook is going to try to develp a social ad network, which will allow ads to be used on 3rd party sites within a Facebook “footprint”. This will be managed by partnering Facebook Connect and Facebook Ads (a service that allows you to make ads and publish to targeted audiences).
According to the site, Facebook Connect is
the next evolution of Facebook Platform – enabling you to integrate the power of Facebook Platform into your own site. Enable your users to…
- Seamlessly “connect” their Facebook account and information with your site
- Connect and find their friends who also use your site
- Share information and actions on your site with their friends on Facebook
It basically allows you to transfer information about your activities on other sites to your Facebook friends via the news feed. This is a smart idea for integrating social networking sites and forcing users to still keep Facebook as their primary community. So in the end, Facebook’s goal would be to get their “footprint” on as many sites as possible and in this “footprint” provide an ad that can appeal to the users needs and wants. Not a bad idea. It’s like putting up flyers on someone else’s bulletin board. I’m looking forward to seeing if this can actually happen. If the idea works, it wouldn’t surprise me if other communities started doing a similar thing.
Source: TechCrunch
Read more about it: VentureBeat
I have wondered on occasion how many Facebook users click on, or even notice, the site’s advertisements. Likewise, are applications lucrative? The answer from the research I’ve done so far: no.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/31/facebook-finances-leaked/
http://mashable.com/2008/01/28/facebook-applications-revenue/
Absolutely true… Facebook will either reinvent itself, or will be a victim of its success…
On an aside, John McCain is now on Twitter. It must be a cold day in hell.
It would be nice to Facebook develop an effective ad system that could rid users of the often annoying and ridiculous ads that currently plague the service. Good luck, Mr. Z.
The idea of paying for its services would of course limit the amount of users of Facebook. The idea of marketing itself on others site is genius. But in the end, Facebook will be bought out by Google, turning it into a monopoly.
The idea is very intriguing and would probably promote more traffic to the site (as if it did not have enough already). The point being that they already have ads on Facebook that generate revenue, now they want to invade other websites as well. I think the idea is good for Facebook, but just annoying to me.