«GOOD BUSINESS IS THE BEST ART»

The company has developed a potentially powerful kind of advertising that's more personal—more "social," in Facebook's parlance—than anything that's come before. Ads on the site sit on the far right of the page and are such a visual afterthought that most users never click them. These ads can evolve, though, from useless little billboards into content, migrating into casual conversations between friends, colleagues, and family members—exactly where advertisers have always sought to be.
"The whole premise of the site is that everything is more valuable when you have context about what your friends are doing," says Facebook co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, who started accepting ads on Facebook as a Harvard sophomore in 2004 in an attempt to cover server costs. "That's true for ads as well. An advertiser can produce the best creative ad in the world, but knowing your friends really love drinking Coke is the best endorsement for Coke you can possibly get."

-Business Week
Oct 2010