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Even before Facebook’s IPO stumbled its way onto the scene, pundits have been making a bit of a sport out of predicting the social behemoth’s demise. The general themes center around why Facebook won’t be around in ten years – a topic we’ve written about before on this blog<\/u>. The IPO just intensified those sentiments, raising (legitimately in some cases) serious questions about how Facebook could ever generate the kind of revenue that would place it among silicon valley giants like Google, Apple and Microsoft. Facebook ads generated about $1 billion last year, but that seems almost paltry in the face of nearly 900 million active users.<\/p>\n
I’ve been thinking that \u00a0just a little stroke of marketing genius would allow Facebook to parlay its popularity into Adwords-level cash. If CNET’s report of a leaked Facebook “want” button<\/a> turns out to be true, that stroke of genius might be on the horizon. The “want” button would theoretically be a “like” button for products instead of general entities. Retailers around the web could put a “want” button on their product listings, which would allow Facebook users to create a centralized wish list within their social network. This idea seems so simple and obvious, but it has me wondering if it’s just the thing to ratchet up Facebook’s ad revenues into the tech-sector stratosphere.<\/p>\n