aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Microsoft + Facebook = Social Advertising
Microsoft invests $240 million in Facebook, beating out Google to buy a 1.6% stake:
The deal is rooted in an online-advertising boom that has turned Facebook into the newest Internet darling. In recent years, advertisers large and small that once focused their spending on television, newspapers and other traditional media have started shifting their spending to a host of Web sites. Google has built its fortunes on that shift and others including Microsoft are rushing in.
Facebook presents a big opportunity for online advertising, in part because it collects detailed information about its users—such as their hobbies, favorite music, location, age, and gender—that can be used to place highly targeted ads.
I think no one in the mainstream press has truly grokked what Facebook has a shot at doing - Adsense driven not by search queries, but by personal profile. It could be a major, major new platform, if we, as a culture, take to it. It’s not a given, but it’s a very compelling vision.
