Today the keynote is Mark Zuckerberg, father of Facebook. I’ll be interested to see if he addresses the repercussions of all those application notices, invitations,  and commercial spam that’s disguised as a Facebook “group” that are flooding user homepages.  If you have a Facebook account and have checked it recently you know exactly what I’m talking about. A “Blockbuster Group”…seriously? I could give two craps what my friend in Houston just rented from Blockbuster. But I digress…he’s coming on.

He takes the stage in a black fleece and blue jeans; not exactly what you’d expect a young billionaire to wear, but maybe that’s part of his draw. He comes off quirky and introverted, easy to relate to and someone who knows what he knows and doesn’t pretend to know things he doesn’t. I could probably have a beer with this guy.

To kick things off the interviewer asks Mark what he thinks the role of Facebook has in the world. He takes a second and answers with what he thinks Facebooks role has been from its beginnings in at Harvard. It’s simply here to help people connect and communicate more efficiently. Facebook’s now taking this purpose International with launches in Spanish, German and, after tonight, French.  He just told a pretty cool anecdote that speaks to how Facebook is a communication tool before it is a commercial tool. Apparently, Facebook is very popular in Columbia. People there are using the site to organize and communicate in their revolt against the Guerilla army…whereas I use it to Superpoke my old roommate. Awesome.  

He goes on to mention that the mission isn’t necessarily to try and create new communities, but rather to foster current communities and making communication within that community more efficient and rich.

Here’s an interesting little tidbit. Mark thinks there will be some universal platform like Facebook (not necessarily Facebook) that everyone online will use to communicate. I tend to agree with him. Taking it a bit further, I think we’ll all also have an “avatar” or some other kind of personal representation that we’ll speak through online, but that’s another entry.

Ah, so the big elephant in the room is finally addressed. ADVERTISING. Here we go. He’s asked about the thought process in bringing marketers into the universe of Facebook. Mark says they try to monetize the site the same way the people use the site. People were already sharing their interests in music, movies, books, so there’s already a sort of user-generated commercialization going on here… so let’s make money off of it.  You can’t argue that, but it just kind of sounds sleazy. He said this speaks to a “shift” in advertising, the likes of which we haven’t seen in decades, in which people don’t listen to products/services talking to them as much as products/services being endorsed to them by friends and family. So true.

They tried to construct their ad model after this idea, but he admits they may have gotten ahead of themselves and gaffed with the interface and communicating these ad partners to users. I couldn’t agree more, but it’s nice to hear him say it. He says we’re all still trying figure out how to effectively monetize social networking in a way that’s amicable to marketers and users alike. It’s going to be a long process and have no grandiose visions of figuring this thing out anytime soon.

That was pretty much the meat of the talk. A pretty good one after Mark warmed up and settled in a bit. The rest of the talk was the interviewer getting ribbed by Mark and the audience (the audience being a lot less playful than Mark).

It should be a good show watching these social networking sites and brands toying around with different strategies until something really clicks (pun intended?). I wonder if it will even happen in the social networking interface and environment that we’re currently experiencing with Facebook, Myspace and Linkedin, or if it will be in the context of a virtual world like Second Life of PS Home? Only time will tell. For now, just being patient wading through your friend requests from Blockbuster and the next Will Ferrell movie.

UPDATE: I ran across this pretty insightful article from Sunday’s Washington Post about what happened when a father asked his son to be his friend on Facebook. It’s a pretty interesting read. Check it out here.