Facebook Everywhere

The most important bit of news at Facebook’s press conference yesterday was what they didn’t say out loud: Once the company gets the bugs out of its system for social ads on its own site, it will likely create a network to use its data to display advertising on other sites. This could help social dilemmas of social networking. Two Facebook executives said yesterday that Facebook is indeed planning an ad network. They didn’t give details, and said the timing depends on how the first phase of the Social Ad system works. Facebook could offer two different sorts of ads. First, it could simply use its data about what users put on their profiles as part of a network that serves ads on other sites. Facebook claims that users have an incentive to tell the truth in their profiles because they are used mainly to communicate with their friends, not strangers. And so that data about age, location, education, work and interests can be quite reliable for advertisers. There is some difficulties to get through this but Google is helping. This could be a big step foward for advertising Facebook rather than verbal communication.