What does that even mean? Facebook is different from MySpace in a lot of ways. Users have to give their real names. Profiles can’t be hacked like MySpace. They have an API instead of threatening little guys. (Maybe that will change, yes, but the same could be said of Google.)

Clearly they’ve made a lot of decisions that are directly counter to MySpace. Could it be that they *don’t* want to be the next MySpace?

I don’t dispute that there are real risks to playing in the Facebook pond, but the same is true of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo etc. Nevertheless a lot of people have made a lot of money (and created a lot of value) in spite of those risks.

Every enterprise makes a “bet the company” decision at some point in their lives, sometimes over and over. Sometimes they pay off and sometimes they don’t, but I think it’s too early to judge whether this was right or wrong.

You’re just a jealous douchebag!

1. There is a distinct possibility that advertising will never take off on Facebook and no one will figure it out.

2. If and when someone does figure it out, it’s in Facebook’s best interest to replicate their model and screw them over. This won’t have to be overt like screwing Oodle over and then launching Marketplace after taking an up-front payment from Oodle, but it will be painful to all the silly little entrepreneurs trying to develop an ad platform for Facebook.

Either Facebook will buy them on the cheap or they’ll simply provide less data to the ad network and build their own copy with more data that they only give their own ad network access to.

I’m amazed that all of you can’t see through this. All Mark Zuckerberg wants to do is be the next Myspace. Nothing more, nothing less.

I am not saying this is a bad thing, but it is hard as an advertiser to figure out if this is a good way to spend precious marketing dollars. I am not comfortable betting on the possibiity of my app becoming so popular that I can start generating money as a publisher; plus my app is not the center of my business – it is an extension of my site. As for general brand advertising, the click-through rates appear to be so dismal that is hard to figure out if I am spending money in the right place.

So I go back to the notion that the FB Ad Networks are great if you have an app that you one day want to be big enough to sell ads on, but beyond that I am just not too sure. Just my opinion.

Just one more parasite feeding off a pig that may be slaughtered.

And when it all crashes around you, you will deny having been a part of it.

Useless !

In the next few months, we will all try lots of crazy ideas on SOCIAL Ads (all enabled by the incredibly innovative Facebook social application platform), one of which will become the new standard for how social networks get monetized. People do what their friends are doing. So while our social application network is starting out with standard PPC auctions, its unlikely to stay that way for very long as we figure out the new standard for Social Ads.

Message me if you get this, lots of ground breaking ahead!