Hehe. I just noticed the irony that this post appears between some blended Google ads.  There actually another Washington post blurb on Tuesday. I was too tired to get a screencap though… =/  My embedded ad points to Election coverage instead, perhaps because I’m in several issue groups. Annoying agreed. At least targetted a little.  While the title of the ad says it is an article from the Washington post, the link points to a story on MSN’s Slate magazine.  And the copyediting is missing even a single space between sentences in one place.  Neither in design or execution, is the Facebook’s good work. They should have tested a small set of users first.  Looks to me like the “Profit Paradox” at play.  (I’d like to more fully illustrate the “Profit Paradox,” but that would take a few pages. However, its kind of like Clayton Christensen’s “Innovator’s Dilemma” - but instead it deals with how a dominant firm - dare I say “unconquerable” - ends up loosing its “insurmountable edge” and eventually becomes a “has been” … all because of its efforts to maximize present profits.)  FaceBook = trying to be worth 1 Billion today = FaceBook becoming Friendster tomorrow!  (In short, I’ve used FaceBook and I’ve liked it up until present. I don’t see how anyone can start the next “FaceBook” and realize comparable success … as far as FaceBook is “currently constituted” / having the same offerings. The only “firm” that can “kill” FaceBook is FaceBook itself. Said differently, FaceBook acting like its worth 400 million is “formidable,” FaceBook acting like its worth a Billion - having to generate the cash flows to justify that valuation - screems “opportunity” … at least if I where a potential competitor.)  I didn’t get any ads in my feeds yet but from the screenshot you provide it seems that they’ve done a really bad job of disclosing that it’s an advertisement. They need be very clear about labeling it as an ad instead of passing it off as something created by a friend.  Not only does this trick users into clicking on links they don’t know are ads, it provides advertisers zero benefit since the user would have accidently clicked it. Facebook, you used to be cool!  I keep saying that FaceBook is trying to end up in the grave. It’s truly amazing that they are such screw ups there.  First, they open up the community which attracts a bunch of people who the existing base are unlikely to be happy about. Imagine you are a member at a country club - one saturday morning you show up to play golf and 500 guys without their shirts off are hanging around drinking beer and waiting to tee of #1.  Then you monetize the site with a scam to irritate the crap out of everyone…it’s a joke. The technology is defenseless, the management has no vision, and they should sell this piece of junk before they are spent coals.  […] Hahahahaha. It looks like Facebook just rolled out those ads we were talking about. They show up inline with your news feed as inconspicuous news items. Apparently they’re not actually telling your friends about what ads you’ve clicked on, but they would be pretty difficult to ignore completely. Check out the story at Mashable. […]  […] Hahahahaha. It looks like Facebook just rolled out those ads we were talking about. They show up inline with your news feed as inconspicuous news items. Apparently they’re not actually telling your friends about what ads you’ve clicked on, but they would be pretty difficult to ignore completely. Check out the story at Mashable. […]  Does this have anything to do with the new exclusive advertising deal Facebook penned with Microsoft? I’m not sure when that goes into effect or if it has already.  I guess I’m just waiting for the day when the word ‘Zune’ gets tacked on automatically to my Interests.  As if there wasn’t enough advertising already. Sign of the times though. Everybody needs to make a living and advertising is the popular choice.  These aren’t ads, these are news stories from The Washington Post! It’s called a News Feed, at least now they’re including actual NEWS.  Now I’m no Facebook user, but based on the screenshots it appears to me that Facebook has done a better job integrating advertising than you have, Pete.  It looks relevant, and it doesn’t look intrusive, whereas in your site I can hardly find your post and the comments anymore. I know you gotta make money bro, but holy schneikey your pages looks like an ad network puked all over it. You’d do well to focus less on quantity and focus more on targeting — I know that’s hard, and hell I still come back to read the content (once I find it).  Personally I love the news feed feature. I think you’ve seriously underrated it and make the incorrect assumption that no one likes it. In fact, Facebook is the only social network I visit, precisely because of the feed - otherwise I’d have nothing to come back for. The information is so well organized.  As for the ad, yeah it’s annoying, but Facebook is good and it’s free, so you get what you pay for.  I’ve got a feeling that Yahoo, or whoever is negotiating about buying Facebook just told Mr. Zuckerberg “just listen, pal, we might buy you for a billion, but, see - we’re not Google. To *us* you should prove first that you can make money. Prove that if we insert more ads your users won’t go away”… And that’s all about it. The bad thing is that Mr. Zuckerberg is overzealous and in a hurry to get to bigger profits he might lose his most precious source of income - his users.  Facebook is dying, with the recent changes and the users in upror I do not see how it can last. I predict MySpace to march out as a grande winner.  What I’ve been seeing lately are my friends from Facebook popping up on MySpace like gophers. These were the “cool” kids from high school that, you know, were “cooooooooooool.” The newsfeed completely took the fun of searching around Facebook for interesting things and instead put them right in front of you. It just plain sucks. The only reason people still log into Facebook is the same reason from the beginning; they want to look at that one hot chick who isn’t blocking her profile from you. Other than that it sucks. Zuckerburg merely stumbled upon something great with Facebook, he didn’t create it with massive goals of changing the way people live. Until another social network can achieve this, I I think the rest will fail.  Cant disagree more man. I LOVE the newsfeed. It keeps me completely up to date with my friends who are scattered across the globe. They post a picture up from a holiday they took - I see it automatically. I also get to see photos where the people in it tagged are on my friends list. Its also a place to see everyones blog posts in one place. Its a powerful tool. Its “the social”. And isnt that what social networking is about? Or more specifically - the internet moving to the fabled paradigm that is web 2.0?  Not sure what I think about those ads though.  […] In case you didn’t already notice, those annoying News Feeds on Facebook finally have ads in them. I for one simply collapse the mini-feed box and never look at it, but upon hearing this news, I opened mine up to take a look and sure enough, I was greeted by an ad for the Washington Post. Gee, thanks Facebook! […]
Facebook raised some controversy when it was announced that they'd be including ads in the widely-criticized news feed feature. That ...