Facebook heralds new 'marketing era'

Wednesday 07th of November 2007

Online networking brainchild Facebook is set to revolutionise the internet marketing environment, according to its founder.

Mark Zuckerberg told advertising and media representatives that the site's innovative technology could herald a new era for advertisers.

His idea is to use the structure of the site to slip advertisers' messages or "social ads" into conversations between friends, one of three new features he is introducing to attract advertisers.

Businesses will be able to tailor their own pages to target their audience and Facebook will also generate an interface that will monitor and report on people's activity on the site.

Social Ads will work by disseminating messages as a virus would, from friend to friend to friend.

"Facebook Ads represent a completely new way of advertising online," Mr Zuckerberg, who is 23, told the New York delegates.

He said that historically the media has been "pushed out to people" but marketers would now "become part of the conversation".

On his Facebook blog, he reassured members that the site would remain free from clutter and no personal information would be sold on.