• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, October 9, 2012

Facebook’s first-ever TV commercial doesn't mention the social media platform's big scale. Perhaps it should. If you want to tout your service as the glue that holds us together, there’s a number to consider: 1 billion, which is how many worldwide users Facebook recently hit.

Still, with 1 billion users there isn't much you can tell consumers about what Facebook essentially does. So what's your message?

Furniture.

The Facebook commercial -- a long one-minute, 15-second affair -- starts off by describing "chairs" as a way to connect (and perhaps rest) with friends and family. Other examples of "connection" are also disclosed. Including doorbells, airplanes, bridges, dance floors and basketball games.

The spot includes images of kids spinning around chairs in a street, young people sharing a joke in a cafe, elderly people sitting in a darkened room listening to another senior citizen, people walking across a deep forested tree-bridge, a sad young woman's face in a kitchen, and thousands of people gathering in a nondescript city square.

At the end, Facebook adds another word for connection: universe. This message is even more ethereal, with some wonderment.  Are we alone? Not if you have the right social media digital platform.

Facebook has had tons of non-traditional TV exposure since its inception (as have Twitter and Google). Some might say a regular-looking commercial isn't necessary in this digital age.

But maybe all of those billion people aren't regular Facebook users. Perhaps, for the bulk of Facebook-ers, the social media platform essentially connects them to a smaller universe of ongoing friends and family – whether through photos of a daughter's ballet performance, a vacation in Hawaii, or a funky business golf outing Northern California.

The missed message seems to be what Facebook can do for people's everyday lives -- better searching, shopping, sharing, and entertaining -- and that by using this people-attachment technology you can have a bit more growth.

But the commercial isn't exactly convincing, because its feel-good message tires in trying to find good feelings. So give me a chair. I need to rest -- and not connect.