Facebook, Why Marketers Should Pay Attention To It

The past week or two, Techmeme just seems to be all about Facebook.  All the other aggregators (Megite, Tailrank, Wikio) seem to have an article about Facebook popping up every 5 entries.  Alright, today it is probably just as much about Google's "poor" earnings report too, but stick with me here, I promise I have a point. :)

More than any other social network, Facebook is making strides to incorporate all sorts of data into its network.  From Twitter to Flickr, from Blog feeds to "what your listening to" feeds - every day, developers are making new widgets to interface Facebook, making it a full fledge communication portal out of your profile.  This can become a one stop shopping place for people to update their friends and family on everything that is happening within their daily lives.

Currently though, the audience of Facebook is a younger generation.  However with the openness of Facebook and free use of their API, Facebook is bound to attack a much more diverse audience over the next year.  The current audience is "ad blind", teens and college students notoriously ignore ads, however, as Facebook begins to appeal to more audiences, that's going to change.

If Facebook gets smart about its advertising offers to its advertisers, and allows them to target certain groups, either by age or interest as their audience grows, Facebook could turn into a place marketers will want to be.  Right now though, Facebook isn't quite there yet, but with more and more technology adopters like Scoble and Steve Rubel finding use for it, it will catch fire and broaden its audience.

If you aren't in Facebook, now's the time to get in there and start figuring it out.  Just take a look at all of these recent articles:

• Scoble - Facebook: the new data blackhole
• Inside Facebook:  Facebook makes it's first acquisition - Parakey
• Inside Faceboo:  Inside Facebook, NFO (News Feed Optimization) is the new SEO
• Techcrunch:  Could Facebook become the next Microsoft?
• Jeremiah Owyang - all your widgets are belong to Facebook
• A VC:  Facebook Will Sit Tight, As It Should
• Tech PR Gems:  Linked In vs. Facebook - Its on!
• Hitwise:  Facebook overtakes MySpace in the UK