After reading through the article that Krit recently posted in our Facebook group, I thought this could be an interesting thing to blog about for this week.  First of all, I think Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s Chief Operating Office, is very accurate in saying that “Mobile is a huge opportunity for Facebook”.  I know that for myself personally, 9 times out of 10 that I check Facebook, I do so on my phone.  I think this is a growing trend for millions of Facebook users, and Facebook needs to adapt in order to speed up monetization and keep up with trends in their business.  Their need to adapt, as expressed in the article, is basically them needing to put more ads into people’s mobile news feeds, something that I’m sure many people would not be so thrilled about.  Reading through a newsfeed on a mobile phone now is great because it is only stories of your friends that come up, and not useless ads that just get in the way.  But in the article they make a point of saying that they will put ads “into user’s news feeds in a way that gives marketers a ‘great return’ and continues to drive engagement”.  Useless advertisements could push people away from Facebook, or at least cause some frustration among users, but they make it clear that they would use ads that “continue to drive engagement”.  Using people locations via their phones could be utilized in order for ads to be specific to people’s locations, such as restaurants, movie theaters, or other such things.  It would also be important for these mobile ads to not interfere with the fluidity the current mobile Facebook has for all its users.  However, they cannot focus too strongly on ads and making money because “MySpace ultimately failed because it focused too much on making money while underinvesting in R&D”.

On a side note, it was interesting to see that in the article, Sandberg had to dismiss rumors about her potentially leaving Facebook.  The fact that these rumors were even circulating (as a results of the terrible IPO), shows that there must be some truth to it, and that it had a very negative impact on the Facebook employees along with all the investors who lost a lot of money in the horrible opening that Facebook had when it opened back in May.  However, Sandberg does seem optimistic about Facebook’s future and that the new developments in the mobile frontier will be a great point of growth for the company.