Facebook 'represents advertising opportunity'

25/07/2008

Social networking sites such as Facebook could offer new opportunities for advertisers in the form of paid-subscription applications, it has been suggested.

According to internetnews.com, the recent f8 conference in San Francisco - a Facebook developers' event held earlier this week - was attended by around 1,000 people, many of whom are keen to profit from Facebook applications and widgets.

Major advertisers such as Terralever - the agency responsible for Red Bull's Facebook campaign - were in attendance at the event, as were a number of other advertising developers working specifically in the field of social media.

"We'll see every business model for Facebook apps in the next few years," stated Flixter chief executive officer Joe Greenstein at the conference.

The chief executive of the Social Gaming Network, Shervin Pishevar, added that new Facebook-specific business models are expected to be announced in the coming months, which could open up further advertising opportunities.

In related news, the makers of Facebook application Scrabulous became the subject of an intellectual property rights lawsuit this week.

Game firm Hasbro, which holds the North American rights to the board game Scrabble, has also demanded that Facebook remove the application from the social networking site.