Some great points Richard.

Yes, definitely. Facebook has a number of issues to resolve with their advertising systems.

Arguably foremost among them is the inability to show really relevant ads to people: I actually like ads because I like learning about new products I might want to buy but the ads usually just crummy dating sites or completely irrelevant to anything I want to purchase.

The other major advertising problem that Facebook has is an institutional problem with not understanding what businesses want. Businesses are desperate for credibility (fans) so agencies like http://facebook.popularfans.com are emerging strictly to get Business Pages more Facebook fans. Something along these lines is something they would do well to emulate.

Despite all of these issues, Facebook has such a large amount of traffic that they’ll still be able to clean house and make a lot of money, but there’s a lot of wasted potential there with regards to technical issues (ad algorithms) and business focus (getting businesses more credibility).

I think Google threatening Facebook is a complete non-issue though. Google is so far away from getting social stuff that they will never understand what is going on and create something that threatens Facebook’s status as the cool new thing. Somebody else might come up with something, but not Google.

It should work in all browsers. Wait until the update next week and let me know if that still doesn't work please.

From Zuckerberg's comment it is obvious he doesn't get that touch changes the experience 😉

Well said, Jeff. Wow, great story to illustrate too. We've become used to all manner of ads on free mobile apps – it's about time Facebook jumped on board, given how active their mobile users are!

I often use the Facebook mobile app News Feed as an example of how your fan page content is getting seen more often than on the web – because the default is always all stories: Most Recent vs. Top News. More than 250 million of Facebook's near 700 million users access Facebook via their mobile devices… and they are *twice* as active as web users!

At one of the recent press conferences (the theme was mobile), an audience member asked Mark Zuckerberg when he was going to come out with an app for the iPad. Zuck's response was that the iPad wasn't a mobile device, it's a computer. LOL. Hmmmm, not sure I agree on that one. There's a *lot* more room on an iPad to serve ads!

Btw, interesting to see targeted ads are now being rolled out based on user data in status updates, posts and comments – and they show up pretty much real time. Amazing.

I remember experiencing this first hand awhile back when I purchased a Facebook ad on my sister's birthday as a lark/experiment. The ad was very tightly targeted just to her, and I was sure she'd see it, but when I called her on her on the big day, she'd never seen it because she spent most of her Facebook time on her iphone!

I've long felt that Facebook should adopt a "Burma Shave" strategy for inserting the ads into the newsfeed of mobile phones. Might require something of a "hard sell" to get the advertisers to buy in, but I don't think it would bother users at all, so long as the ads had were minimally clever/tasteful/relevant.

– Jeff