Facebook now plans to sell advertising that will appear in the user's news feed. These "sponsored stories" will begin to appear in January 2012.
Facebook considers sponsored stories an organic marketing tool. When a Facebook user "likes" an ad or a certain brand's fan page, the brand will use that activity to create an ad which will be sent to the user's friends as well as other potential fans of the page. These sponsored stories currently show up on the right-hand side of the Facebook page, along with other ads. However, with this new change in advertisement, sponsored stories may now show up where photos and status updates would.
For a time, Facebook engaged in selling companies space for stories about the companies' brands. The stories appeared in the news feed, but the strategy did not last more than two years. The problem that brought this to an end was due to a Facebook caveat that allowed for its users' activity to be monitored. It was a clear breach of privacy, an element that for some reason, Facebook seems to find itself in hot water over time and time again.
Apparently there is no way to opt out of seeing or appearing in sponsored stories. The only option is to "x" out of each individual ad to remove it. Facebook is even facing legal action from those who claim that sponsored stories violate a California statute which prevents the use of a person's name or picture in a paid ad without that person's consent.
Most Facebook users do not enjoy any major changes to Facebook, especially since most of them use the site daily. People are not happy about the overexposure of sponsored stories. Some users will probably be outraged by the presence of ads in the news feed, and also by having their content directly used to make Facebook money. Privacy is of paramount importance to all Internet users, not just Facebook users.
Others might argue that Facebook provides a valuable service to users for free, and should be able to show ads wherever it wants to. However, Facebook representatives have assured users that they will not see more than one in the news feed a day. Also, the stories will only feature friends of the user or pages that the user has already "liked."
Advertisements could even begin to be seen in the mobile app, since about half of Facebook users access the site through their smartphones. Representatives for Facebook have stated that mobile sponsored stories will not show up immediately, but they did not elaborate on future ad plans for the news feed.
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