MarketingVOX: At the Web 2.0 Summit, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg laid out his vision for the social network’s future, including plans for advertising on the site, reports InformationWeek.
Facebook’s staff is expected to double to 700 over the next year to keep pace with the site’s growing userbase. Facebook currently has 47 million active users and is growing rapidly.
New staff will be devoted to product development, with that being the focus over revenue.
But revenue is also in Zuckerberg’s future plans. While he remained mum on details, he hinted that announcements regarding ads on Facebook would be coming in the next few months.
Zuckerberg’s talk came on the same day MySpace announced it would release a platform to allow developers to build widgets and applications atop the leading social network.
Rupert Murdoch and Chris DeWolfe’s announcement included the note that advertising would be included on application pages, with developers keeping 100 percent of the ad revenue from those pages. Widgets put on regular profile pages, however, may not contain ads.
The opening of a platform for MySpace is clearly a response to the popularity of Facebook’s open development platform.
Related stories:
- College Students: Social Networking’s Hot, Facebook Sizzles
- Facebook Apps Adopting Inevitable Long Tail, Says O’Reilly
- Nielsen: Teens Want Their MySpace, and Facebook Too
- MySpace Talks Serious Ad Customization for Skeptic Advertisers
- MySpace Considers Opening Doors Third-Party APIs
- On Facebook’s Heels, LinkedIn Opens Back-End to Programmers
