Facebook Ads

A little off topic here for this blog, but try to stay with me and my out-there theories…

So today, facebook launched a publicly available Commenting Widget for any site via its Facebook Connect program. This is a very powerful tool – as it gives the ability to any site/blog to allow their users to use facebook logins to post comments on the site. That means the site doesn’t have to convince the user to sign up for an account, fork over personal info, check there email and verify it etc etc. In this day and age everyone has a facebook account – and now if you have any desire at all to leave a comment on a site that users FB connect commenting widget, there is no sign up – you just login with your facebook credentials and boom  - you are verified and ready to leave a comment.

Now, you are probably asking – what the heck does this have to do with facebook ads (given the name of the blog – Ads on Facebook)? Well, here is what im thinking. If facebook can gain mass adoption across the web with this type of widget (which i think they will, given the points above) – they are in essence growing there “available impressions”. The elements inside the FB commenting widget are 100% controlled by facebook. While yes, you can change the background color and the such – you cant add any custom code or HTML to the widget (as most widgets work). So now Facebook has this block of code on your page that totally controls a (commenting) section of the page and can add anything they want. OK, so you know where im going with this – yes, they can use these widgets to display ads. 

Now, i understand that fb wouldn’t even dream of adding ads anytime soon – as they want as few obsicales as possible in front site owners so they implement the fb commenting widget. But lets look a few years down the line & half of the web is using facebook connect as a commenting widget – the same time fb is trying to pump revenue to prepare for and IPO… would it be so crazy for them to start placing their ads inside the widget??? Look at google, 6 months ago they didnt have ads showing half the products that they do now (maps, images, there are more – just cant think of any off the top of head) – and now, they are popping up everywhere google can put them. This is also how they started with search – ad-free until people “needed them” for search. Whats gonna happen when site owners need FB for their commenting system.

Or maybe, that havard drop out is even smarter than that & can use the commenting widget (and the other 100+ widgets im sure they are already developing) to create the adsense 2.0 fb-style. Its pretty easy once you got a million sites using your widgets – you give the site owner the option to add facebook ads to the widget and share the revenue via a facebook affiliate program.  And just like that, you double, triple your ad inventory… Couple that with the data that facebook can collect on your site – ie. the people who comment – what they like, what they do on fb etc etc. Damn talk about targeted ads!

Its amazing, that in this day and age – where it seems like the entire global economy is collapsing & the govt is about to take over the banking industry (if that doesn’t scare you nothing will!) — facebook keeps on better positioning itself to become the next big thing on the internet (oh, it already is…..). 

Here is a 5 minute video facebook put out that shows you how to add the facebook commenting widget to your site in 5 minutes.

Let me know what you think in the comments. Am i crazy? Am i dead on? Do you have some other ideas how they can use these “widgets” for future business purposes?