New and Improved Ways to Market on Facebook?? Or Just Another Annoying Advertisement?

Promoting brands seems to be Facebook’s up and coming tag-on to its current marketing strategy, which seems to be doing quite well anyways.  “Sponsored stories” are now going to be built into different elements of Facebook user pages and will find ways to be more visible more often.  The whole goal of adding “Sponsored Stories” is to even further connect Facebook users and add on an extra element to the concept of viral marketing (developing a spider-web-like dynamic).  By connecting brands and stories with people and multiple users, exposure become drastically increased and also becomes associated with people and what they do. 

They say that by incorporating the “sponsored stories” into user interactions and applications (likes, location check-ins, page posts, etc.) that Facebook is hoping to capture the “word of mouth recommendations and endorsements that are happening across Facebook every day…and increase distributions of those.”  But is it really possible to capture word of mouth marketing?  Isn’t that messing with the entire essence of word of mouth?  Maybe it isn’t; maybe this is the future of marketing in places where marketing already exists and is somewhat saturated.  Facebook seems to always be on the forefront of new and improved social media and maybe, just maybe, they have found a way to capture “word of mouth.”

Article and Reference: http://www.brandweek.com/bw/content_display/news-and-features/digital/e3i2e55ccc3a708918b261b7213cc452295