The biggest social network, which has more than 300 million users, has expressed its intention for closer relations in the Latin American market. Michael Murphy, worldwide sales vicepresidente at Facebook, explained that Facebook is a great place for brands. At the moment, there is a large portion of ‘Latinos’ visiting the website; from these, one million are developing applications for the site. He believes that Facebook is a great place for consumers who would like to share and create business opportunities.
Facebook’s advertisers want closer relations with users and they are planning to do so through Fox Point. Hector Costa, senior vice president and general manager of Fox Point Networks for Latin America, said that “in Latin America web advertising penetration is growing at double digits every year. Advertisers want to use social networks to advertise their goods and services”.
Murphy, also explains that Facebook has a link to advertisers in different formats and so a brand can send messages to users. Nevertheless, he said that this is just a business model which is in test phase. All the same, he confirms that Facebook’s revenue comes from advertising. As for competition, he mentions that Facebook differs from others like Twitter and MySpace in that people on Facebook register with their real name, and other networks of people are anonymous, "so Facebook is a safer space for brands to reach out to consumers."
Facebook is working as any other media - professionally. They are not taking advantage of the cyber space – are you listening...metatags, keywords, hyperlink and finally adwords? We can note a straightforward business agreement. There is ‘consent’ to display an advertisement. That said, if we do not discuss here the issue of whether an average consumer will be confused or not by these new way of advertisements, it is clear that there are ‘fair practices’ in which the cyber world can integrate marketing and advertising without raising concerns to trade mark owners.
