The management cadre at Facebook is always up to something. Sometimes their ideas work, other times they face a revolt among the 900 million users they alleged to have for their social media site.
The Wall Street Journal reported in its weekend edition of June 23/24, 2012 Facebook has begun placing ads on Zynga’s web site, attempting to add revenue sources.
The Journal floated the thought placing advertising on a non-Facebook site could also be the first step toward the company starting its own ad network as a potential competitor to Google’s AdSense, where web site publishers gain revenue in the form of commissions from hosting ads placed there by Google on behalf of advertising clients.
The ubiquitous Google ads, commonly seen on thousands of web site, are now parodied with sponsored stories and ads from Facebook on Zynga’s web site.
The Journal reported Facebook won’t share any information about people or advertisers with Zynga and advertisers aren’t receiving new targeting criteria.
Ads appear at the margins of screens on Facebook when users play Zynga games, and users on Zynga.com see similar ads from Facebook when they using the gamers site.
The two companies have had a long relationship; Zynga was the developer of FarmVille on the Facebook site. Facebook already takes a 30% cut of all revenue made through Zynga games on Facebook.
Separately, The Wall Street Journal also reported that “overconfidence” and “arrogance” among NASDAQ staff contributed to problems with May’s initial public offering by Facebook.
Robert Griefield, the NASDAQ CEO told a conference of corporate directors the stock exchange wasn’t sufficiently ready for a flood of canceled orders juste before Facebook trading started.
Leading up to the IPO and immediately afterward, Facebook has faced a number of issues, many generated internally, which have resulted in changes the way the company does business and treats the privacy of Facebook members.