The Social

(Credit: Rob Webb)

This post was updated at 5:34 AM on Friday with comment from Facebook.

Finally, I can now do something about all those tacky speed-dating ads that show up on my Facebook profile. Blogger Rob Webb appears to have been the first to notice that the social network now allows members to rate the site's ads with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, you know, gladiator-style.

Facebook originally launched its "social ads" strategy last November, and privacy concerns over the controversial "Beacon" ads gave the program some pretty bad press. But this move is pretty innovative, and likely won't be met with the same kind of backlash. As Webb noted in his blog post, if users can interact with ads and offer their opinion, they might be more likely to notice them and click through to them in the first place. That could do something to help the notoriously low click-through rates that plague social-networking sites like Facebook.

It's also a way that Facebook can make its ads more targeted by learning about user preferences: if you repeatedly give the thumbs-down to dating ads, for example, Facebook could stop showing them so much. Or if you're in the New York regional network on Facebook and are disapproving of Mets ads, Facebook could show you Yankees ads instead.

Facebook representatives told CNET News.com that the feature is not available to all users and is a sort of test. "Facebook regularly experiments with site changes in an effort to continually improve the user experience," a statement from the company read. "The feedback tool for Facebook Ads that you noticed is currently available to a portion of site users. We are evaluating the response to the tool and considering whether to make it more broadly available."

Move over, iPhone: The cool system to "jailbreak" these days is Facebook's new advertising initiative.

Two aspects of Facebook Ads--the "Beacon" and friend-recommendation-equipped "Social Ads"--have already garnered some skepticism around the Web for being potentially invasive, annoying, or both. Many Facebook users, myself included, haven't even seen these advertisements yet, but code-savvy developers like Nathan Weiner of The Idea Shower have already decided that we might want out.

Blocking the Beacon, Weiner wrote, is remarkably easy. All that's required, according to a set of instructions, is a site-blocking Firefox plugin, and then the Beacon application can't send Facebook any information about what you've been doing on partners' sites. Valleywag theorizes that the Social Ads program may be the next target.

Facebook has plenty of smart engineers on board, and they'll likely find a way to "un-jailbreak" the company's advertising platform; think about how Apple has repeatedly released software updates for the iPhone that (among other things) prevent clever users from unlocking them and installing third-party software.

But this should be a heads-up for Facebook: when people are hard at work on workarounds, it's a sign that they might not be too happy with the concept.

NEW YORK--When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg spoke to a room full of reporters shortly after announcing the company's new Facebook Ads initiative, it became clear that this move is a risky one. Facebook Ads, with its focus on "trusted referrals," is heavily rooted in viral distribution tactics. And it's well-known by now that while a viral phenomenon can reach soaring levels of popularity, it can also become synonymous with in-your-face annoyance.

Zuckerberg was insistent that Facebook users will appreciate the fact that they'll be seeing advertisements that cater specifically to their interests and that showcase recommendations from their friends. "It seems like people prefer targeted ads. They just perform way better," he said. "The point that we're trying to make today is that it's way more organic and natural."

But there are questions--some big ones. One reporter voiced skepticism over the fact that because they're advertisements, the "trusted referrals" will only extend to positive reviews, whereas a major component of real-life recommendations among friends is what not to buy.

Perhaps more troubling is the fact that if you sign up as a "fan" of an advertiser group on Facebook--a brand of sneakers, for example--your name will automatically run alongside "Social Ads" for that brand in your friends' profiles, and Zuckerberg said that there's not yet a way to opt out of that.

"This is the first iteration of this," the Facebook founder assured the press as he explained that since Facebook Ads is new, the company could potentially change that no-opt-out policy for being a "fan" of a group. "When we announce a product, we want to also launch it (but) I wouldn't say that what we're launching today is the final version."

He promised that the company would act quickly if any concerns arose.

Forrester Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang emphasized that Facebook is still being very careful. "User backlash should be low for a few reasons," he said. "One, only two Social Ads display per day, (and) two, since users have become fans of a brand (opt in) they personally endorse, they ask for it." Essentially, they're getting what they're paying for, Owyang said in an e-mail interview with CNET News.com. "Since there's already ads on Facebook (flyers, banner ads, and sponsored groups) this is nothing new to a system where the features are free."

To add to Facebook's caution, the launch partners in Facebook Ads are also conscious of the potential for backlash. One of them is Sarah Chubb, president of Conde Nast's CondeNet Web division, which will be debuting tie-ins for its Epicurious and Flip.com brands on Tuesday night. "Anyone who was in that room today who's participating in this thing has probably thought very hard about that," Chubb said of the launch event in an interview with CNET News.com. "What's going to be interesting for anybody who's using the service as an advertiser is figuring out which kind of messages get the best reception--I think any one of us would risk alienating people."

But Chubb is ultimately optimistic. "We're advertising our sites and ultimately probably our magazines as well, and our sites are based on very vertical categories of interest like food and travel. Because those are sort of the things that people like to badge themselves with and share on Facebook anyway," she said, "we think that we don't run much risk."

Speaking with the press, Zuckerberg also answered questions about exactly what Microsoft has to do with Facebook Ads in light of its $240 million stake in the social network. The answer: not much. Redmond will be providing the "non-social" advertisements that will remain on the site.

"Microsoft is the exclusive third-party provider of IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) standard ads on Facebook. This program that we're launching, it's just a different format--they're not IAB-standard ads." Zuckerberg added that Facebook had worked the situation out with Microsoft. "We think it's a different kind of advertising."

Forrester analyst Owyang says there's no reason to suspect this wasn't the plan all along. "It's my understanding that Microsoft will continue to do what they do well--sell banner advertising and visual banners on Facebook," he said. "This has little impact to their current relationship, although it would make sense for the Microsoft Sales team to be selling these additional products to their clients. In some cases, expect banner ads to be used in a coordinated method with social ads."

At the conclusion of Zuckerberg's meeting with the press, the question arose about Google's OpenSocial platform, which has been described by some as a "Facebook killer." But the Facebook founder said it hasn't caused them to lose much sleep. "We've been so busy with this launch that we haven't had time to really look at that," he said. "We'll see after it launches."

Zuckerberg paused. "They're working on some issues."

NEW YORK--Standing in the front of a room packed full of corporate executives, journalists, and representatives from Madison Avenue's biggest advertising companies, on Tuesday afternoon Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg formally announced the social-networking site's new advertising initiative, an ambitious program deeply rooted in viral trends and "trusted referrals."

Called Facebook Ads, the new program is threefold: advertisers can create branded pages, run targeted advertisements, and have access to intelligence and analytics pertaining to the site's more than 50 million users. Partners can participate in all three components of Facebook Ads, or a combination of them. "When you put this all together, you get some pretty amazing things," Zuckerberg said of the program, which he said took "four months or so" to develop.

Through the branded pages program, advertisers can design custom pages with information, content, and custom applications--"any application that was written for users on the Facebook Platform," Zuckerberg explained. Facebook users can sign up as "fans" of that brand, install branded applications, and other activities that will all show up in their profiles' "mini feeds" and on the "news feeds" that are broadcast to their friends lists.

"When people engage your page on Facebook, that's going to spread information about your brand virally through the social graph," Zuckerberg said. "It becomes a trusted referral."

And with a "Beacon" application, this can connect to advertisers' external homepages, which Zuckerberg demonstrated by pretending to sell a pair of Adidas sandals (his trademark, which he had notably forsaken for a pair of closed-toed shoes during Tuesday's announcement) on eBay; a Facebook window popped up and asked if he wanted to share news of the sale on his Facebook profile.

Additionally, Facebook has unveiled targeted advertisements that will allow marketers to target by any information inside Facebook profiles, from relationship status to favorite television shows. Zuckerberg demonstrated the interface by targeting a hypothetical running shoe ad toward women aged 18 to 30 in New York who have listed "running" among their interests.

"With this interface, you'll be able to target exactly the people that you want," Zuckerberg said. "This is some really powerful stuff, and nothing like this has ever been seen before."

Finally, Zuckerberg showed how Facebook Ads will also give advertisers access to tracking and analytics information about exactly who they're reaching and what kind of trends are appearing all over the site. "As you run ads on Facebook, you'll be able to see the exact mindshare that your brand is getting."

He assured the audience that this will not compromise members' personal privacy in any way. "No direct personally identifiable information is ever shared back with marketers," he explained.

Facebook Ads, which officially launch Tuesday night, will be accessible through the company's sales team as well as through an online "self-service assistant." Launch partners, which had been rumored to be limited to a select nine or ten, include The New York Times Co., Blockbuster, CondeNet, General Motors, STA Travel, Fandango, CollegeHumor, Joost, Six Apart, Coke, Sony BMG, Verizon, and several dozen others.

The unveiling of Facebook's advertising program was hotly anticipated, with rumors flying around for weeks about exactly how the fast-growing company would tackle the tough issue of how to advertise on a social network--where people go to "poke" their friends, not search for new products to buy.

But last month, Microsoft announced that it had purchased a $240 million stake in Facebook, valuing the young company at $15 billion, with the intention of expanding its existing advertising partnership. Then, Facebook saw some of its thunder stolen last week, when Google revealed its OpenSocial initiative largely to counteract Facebook's momentum, and rival MySpace.com announced a targeted advertising initiative of its own.

But that wouldn't dampen Zuckerberg's enthusiasm. In his well-rehearsed keynote address, reminiscent of Steve Jobs' legendary Apple product unveilings, the 23-year-old CEO explained that "we are in a time in history where more information is available and people are more connected than they have ever been before."

He repeatedly described Facebook Ads as a revolution in marketing. In the last century, he explained, the cost of communication was vastly higher than it is now, and media channels were only available on a macro level. "In the next hundred years, information isn't just going to be pushed out to people. It's going to be shared across the billions of connections that people already have," Zuckerberg said. "Pushing out your message isn't enough anymore."