With heavy-hitting brands such as Microsoft (who recently signed a $240 million deal for a stake in Facebook), Coca-Cola, Sony Pictures Television and Blockbuster among the 60 advertisers already signed up, it's clear that Facebook is not playing around. Companies will be able to create their own profile page and use it as a spring board to launch viral apps, ranging from brand stamped games to e-commerce apps. So what's so great about these new advertising opportunities?
"Social actions are powerful because they act as trusted referrals and reinforce the fact that people influence people," said Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. "It's no longer just about messages that are broadcasted out by companies, but increasingly about information that is shared between friends. So we set out to use these social actions to build a new kind of ad system."
Facebook say that its users will only be exposed to Social Ad's to the extent that their friends are participating. However, if your friend does share ad information, you won't be able to avoid it appearing in your news feed. As much as we all love our friends, there is no guarantee that we will also love their taste in films.
Ad campaigns like these have added fuel to the already substantial privacy-issues on social networking sites. Advocates for internet privacy suggest that using popular networking sites, primarily seen as a safe arena for communicating with trusted friends, to tailor ads based on the interests of its users is a betrayal of trust. And the Federal Trade Commission expressed concern that advertisers may have access to too much information about people's activities just last week.
Of course, Facebook and MySpace are quick to defend themselves from such accusations, insisting that they only utilize information that the user had chosen to share. But with the proliferation of advertising targeted on the personal interests of users, those users may begin to question just how much social networking sites know about them - and how much they are happy with them knowing.
