Oi Facebook - stop flacking me, sell me pokes instead !

Lesson to Facebook - that developer community is a double edged sword - its taken just 24 hours for someone to work out how to switch off FaceAds - and thus totally invalidate the entire Ad model. From now on in you are in an arms race with an entire planet of smart aleck developers who will enjoy nothing better than fudging Flackbook plays. You can't win you know.

And as others, not just us, have pointed out, any "FanSumer" who tries to flack someone is likely to be cut out of that person's social network PDQ. And more...it may even be illegal in some countries and US states

No, to monetise yourself we would suggest that you create a "pull" system for monetisation - ask people to pay for stuff that is important to them - like vampire bites, pokes and virtual dildoes.

This is a model that has been used very successfully by online games such as CyWorld, Habbo Hotel etc - people pay to festoon their personal spaces with silly knicknacks, and to send em to each other. The average annual spend of a (teenage, non credit card owning) Habbo Inhabitant is c $5 pa, the actives - who you really want - spend the price of a movie ticket per month (say c $50 per annum at least) voluntarily, and why not let brands sponsor them (This Poke is brought to you by Cillit Bang

The alternative you guys espouse, assuming even a $2 CPM (which is very generous for a SocNet), is to try to push my "trusted friends" to flack me with c 25,000 ads I don't want every year to get the equivalent value. If CPM's stay closer to the c $0.2 level they typically are today in SocNets, thats 250,000 flacks.

Whereas selling pokes is a pull model - people want the stuff, they'll pay for it, brands can sponsor it - well they do elsewhere anyway, so why not for you? And your developers can monetise as they get to keep some of the money too we hope.

This advice is given in an open source spirit....a mere 1% of the money you make using this approach finding its way to us to show your appreciation will suffice