Facebook and Advertising

Is Facebook too crowded for ads?

For the record, I believe that social media has permanently changed the landscape of marketing. Tools now exist for consumers to control the conversation with companies, and smart marketers can participate and engage with customers more directly and honestly than ever before. That's a reality.

The sacred cow is the belief that Facebook and Twitter are the premier platforms for this revolution. As those platforms become mainstream, marketers like us turn them into forms of traditional paid media and they become less valuable as social networks. Facebook is already starting to resemble a tacky mall cluttered up with unwanted advertising and promotional noise. As time goes on, I predict that people will want to protect their closest community of friends and will find ways to block out everyone else. They will leave mega networks for smaller, more focused communities. If you really care about the principles of social media, start looking for the next generation of platforms because as far as Facebook and Twitter go, the neighborhood is getting too crowded.

But who's right? then there's this comment:

i just love it when people talk dirty...about Facebook. Let's get serious about all of this social media. it is fast becoming one of the great time wasters of our age. As time becomes more valuable to employers and productivity becomes more in demand, time-wasters will diminish from monitored at-work key strokes. Twitter and Facebook will be the first to go. Moments later paranoia will set in as layoffs set heads to roll. No one will be wanting to be seen with LinkedIn or Plaxo on their screen if it is perceived as a network-me-outta-here activity. Social Networks are just that. "Social." It will take a quantum leap on the part of client cultures to "get" the ways to leverage social media. And then it will be the client, not the agency calling the shots on how it is used. As long as advertisers continue to regard the Audience as prospective customers, they will never get it right.

I guess we'll see.