I don't understand why I'll want to use Facebook features when I'm not on Facebook, or why I wouldn't ignore Facebook ads the same way I ignore all ads. But maybe magic web 2.0 fairy dust can mystically make advertising not obnoxious.

We just had a thread posted here

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1347227

suggesting that many Facebook users don't look at Facebook ads at all. (I'm one of them--I use Ad Blocker on all websites.) The case reported here was of a mother who ignored a photo of her own child, so practiced was her banner blindness.

So google dominates intent driven advertising and facebook is trying to be the king of intent building advertising.

Facebook's competitive advantage is its horde of demographic information that they have on individual people.

I am somewhat undecided on how successful facebook will be at this. They have the information to see what will influence you, but I don't think they have a tool that will allow you to ingest it into your brain.

For example, they may have information that says you like britney spears and that she can influence you, but their mechanism to get influencing messaging to you is through a banner ad for instance. The overall effect is uneffective because the tool (banner ad) is just straight up ignored by most people.

So the vehicles that exist in delivering advertising content online is just not effective and there needs to be a better way that needs to be created.

The initial results of such tools that facebook to build intent don;t look to be effective.