Facebook going Chinese? Launching Social Ads?

You've got to admire our friends at Facebook--they seem to be doing a decent job handling the challenges of massive growth. As reported in the Telegraph yesterday, it also looks as if they're gearing up for some major internationalization--in fact, they're going Chinese.

As Owen Van Natter, Facebook's chief operating officer, said in an interview: "Everybody in the world wants Facebook. When we translate it in the coming months, we will unlock a huge amount of demand."

Honestly, I love Facebook, and it seems that more and more of us older types (ok, over 40) are hanging out there. I'm sure they'll tackle the international expansion well.

Another recently announced program, Facebook Ads, is a little more complicated and may not be well received by the masses. In essence, Facebook is now making it easier for companies to create their own pages and promote their brands and products through Facebook.

From the official press release:

“Today, Facebook Ads launched with three parts: a way for businesses to build pages on Facebook to connect with their audiences; an ad system that facilitates the spread of brand messages virally through Facebook Social Ads™; and an interface to gather insights into people’s activity on Facebook that marketers care about.”

Companies are jumping at the chance to enter this space, and approximately 100.000 Facebook pages went online the first day (heck, even Lulu might do it). On the surface this might make good business sense, but online communities, even the free ones, can quickly revolt if they feel that they're going to be the target for spam and scams.

Maybe this was inevitable, but expecting that users will jump on the bandwagon and add companies as friends seems to be unrealistic.

Time will tell.

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