Facebook gets its first lobbyist in DC. Well that didn’t take long.

Should Facebook members be able to sell their own ads?

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The NYT Bits blog has a post about Weblo, a service that lets Facebook members place and make money from ads on their profile pages. According to Weblo, it’s a moral right.

But Weblo’s chief executive Rocky Mirza says that people should be able to sell space on their pages on Facebook (and a variety of other sites like MySpace and YouTube) because they are the content creators on those sites. Facebook would have no content if not for its users, he said, which makes it different from media organizations, for example, that have content because they pay reporters. … “Obviously Facebook is providing the infrastructure, so they can place ads on the left side,” Mr. Mirza said. “But users should be getting paid for the time they spend on the Internet and the friends they draw to their pages.” 

Generous of him to let Facebook have the left-hand side of their own site. Isn’t this a matter of contract? If you use Facebook, it’s because you’ve accepted their terms. Even as a moral matter, aren’t you getting something in return from Facebook already? Namely the free networking service.

Dec 10, 2007 | 1 Comment | Tags: , ,

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