• Advertising Age, Monday, September 15, 2008 11:15 AM

Ad Age pundit Bob Garfield knows how to monetize Facebook. In a column addressed specifically to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Garfield proclaims that mass marketing in the future does not depend on mass media; rather, it will depend on social communications and a kind of quid pro quo between consumer and marketer. Marketers will receive access to consumer data in exchange for providing consumers with something of value-entertainment, information, a discount or some other utility.

As Garfield points out, this already takes place "on an enormous scale" in your everyday life. Nowhere is this more true than on Facebook, where we willingly an untold amount of priceless information about ourselves.

Meanwhile, research shows that not only do people use other people to find things they like, but they also use the things that other people like to find more people they like. In other words, Facebook users cultivate connections based on common affiliations. Given this useful information, Garfield says that Facebook should "have a big honking box" on the bottom of every page with a category-by-category selection of media and products and services you like titled "What You'll Like" or "YouStuff", etc. Charge for marketers for hyperlinks and there's your business model, he says.

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