Facebook Watch: Advertising, IPO, Goldman Fallout and more

In addition to seeing unofficial biopic The Social Network sweep the Golden Globes on Sunday night, it's been a busy week for Facebook-related news:

• A Texas District Attorney plans to use Facebook to screen potential jurors.

• Facebook Voice Updates on India's Aircel wireless network now let people connect with family and friends in their own voice via mobile, with or without internet access. Users dial a short code to record a VM, post it as a status update, and friends can reply with their voice updates. More than 15 million active FB users are in India, where mobile is ubiquitous. 

• Advertising spending on Facebook is projected to more than double in 2011 over 2010, projected to reach $4.05 billion this year, according to eMarketer. FB accounted for 4.7% of last year’s $25.8 billion U.S. online ad market; that percentage is expected to increase to 7.8% for 2011.

• Windows Live Messenger bumps CityVille as fastest growing Facebook app.

• The Washington Post is getting in the social marketing game with the launch of SocialCode. The WaPo subsidiary is billed as a full-service Facebook advertising agency with the following pitch to marketers: “it can help companies expand their Facebook presence through “competitive analysis, application development, Page management, social commerce and fan monetization.”  

• “Reach Blocks” on Facebook now cost “almost as much as a basic homepage takeover on Yahoo and MSN.” TBI research finds that FB is attracting major advertisers in a shift from search ad spend to this new self-serve platform. Ikea, Dennys, and World Wrestling Entertainment have all signed-up. 

• Asos.com is about to launch a fully transactional Facebook shop app on its FB page, with its entire stock available and 1,300 new products weekly. This marks the first FB app not relying on third-party social commerce providers, according to Marketing Week.

• More fallout from Goldman Sachs' reneged promise on FB's $1.5 billion IPO, after a valuation media frenzy and criticism of sidestepping SEC regulations for private companies. New York magazine sums it up (in an article titled "Botched Facebook Deal Makes Everybody Hate Goldman") — “the whole thing plays out like an early Valentine's gift to Morgan Stanley.”  

• Make-My-Baby.com, the third-biggest advertiser on Facebook (and MySpace) in the fourth quarter of 2010, delivered a whopping 1.7 billion ad impressions. Unfortunately, it was a scam and a bit of an embarrassment for both social networks. The scheme enticed people to install a toolbar that re-directed their searches to Microsoft's Bing. Now, Gawker reports, “Facebook is trying to say that the site was never an advertiser,” adding that "any affiliates that try to push people there we would shut down." 

• And finally – to get away from it all, FB is eyeing a move to a 57-acre Silicon Valley campus once occupied by Sun Microsystems. Several miles from its present headquarters, the move will afford FB “a more isolated corporate campus away from the trendy areas of Palo Alto.” Isolated? But isn't that against the Facebook ethos?