Just saw a valleywag post on the new Facebook ad system that seems to be coming out of stealth mode. The tone of the article being that Google should be paying attention to this new thread.
Come on guys. I would say that over 50% of the profiles on Facebook are juiced up to make user’s look better/different than they are in real life. People lie about who they are, what they like, what their preferences are. Furthermore, as a Facebook user is spending most of his time looking at other user profiles or pimping up his own, putting more ad pressure on them will not work. Their user profile is their personal territory. It is difficult to monetize that without annoying them.
Now compare that to the power of Google. People that are searching using the Google search engine are less likely to complain about commercial inks than people browsing Facebook profiles. Google reaches probably most of the entire Internet population and is able to spread ad pressure across many platforms and users, while Facebook is forced to increase ad pressure in the personal space of its (limited number of) users. Google uses user actions to define which ad fits, while Facebook uses user profiles (big mistake I think).
But most important of all, I don’t think Facebook is doing its users any pleasure with this, and that is precisely why it won’t work. From a “I want to monetize the Facebook network”point of view a logical step, but from a user centric point of view a no-go. Sorry guys, but in my opinion, you are no match for Google.
@vanelsas 