Share price is a fallin’, advertisers are a ballin’. So what’s next for Facebook? Forcing large, unwanted adverts in your face, that’s what.

We want to be thoughtful about how we introduce ads in news feed, so we have limits in place to ensure that people’s news feeds are not filled with advertising, but we don’t have specific numbers to share.

Of course not, because Facebook is having a mild panic about just how it can actually generate income from the social networking platform.

Of forcing adverts into your news feed, Facebook says: “We think this will make it easier for businesses to reach more people,” and it will, because they’ll probably make them featured items too, which means they’ll be right there, in your face.

Most people have a love/hate (more hate, actually) relationship with changes that the social media platform introduces without asking, and unfortunately users need to remember that the service is free, so Facebook can pretty much do what it wants, possibly at the expense of pissing users off enough to leave, but Facebook needs to impress the investors remain.

Apparently the new forced advertising from Pages you don’t even like is only currently part of a very small test programme, and presumably only available to a handful of businesses, and shown to just a small percentage of the service’s users.

Even though Facebook says they’ll be assessing reactions to the new feature, it’s probably safe to expect a larger scale rollout in the near future as the software algorithm improves.

For brands that have spent huge amounts on amassing fan bases, this will likely feel a little like a slap in the face.

[Source: cnet]