As many of you may know, Facebook last week unveiled their ad platform "Facebook Beacon". Although timing could have been only moderately coincidental, it seems to me that the release was an attempt to quickly rationalize why a $240 million investment from Microsoft for 1.6% of their business is somehow a "good buy". 1.6% of Facebook doesn't make much sense to me for Microsoft but that is besides the point I suppose. Facebook's Beacon will tie in activity across numerous websites into a user's Facebook profile. The Facebook spin says that the rich user data self-provided will allow a level of advertising targeting not yet available. Somehow as a search junkie, I still think that a search results query provided at the very moment when the user requests it is FAR more timely and at least or more relevant (assuming the engines do a good job providing results). I am of the belief that Facebook's move to open up their platform to outside innovation was a GENIUS MOVE and is consistent with the sea change on the Internet towards a crowd-sourcing, mass collaboration marketplace (my association with Bazaarvoice is evidence that I am a big believer in this market force). However, I think its somewhat dubious to think that Facebook is worth $10 billion because they can display targeted ads. The integration capabilities across the web are interesting and maybe one day that will prove to make $10 billion cheap. Personally, I would be hesitant to invest my own $ knowing how fickle and anti-corporate the web user is today.
One of the partners for Beacon is Typepad who hosts this blog. Thus, I am going to test out their blog post integration capabilities and let you know what I find out! Here goes...
