Google can subsist on ads, because it's primary function is to help someone find something. The ads are related to what you are trying to find, so they are som

Google can subsist on ads, because it's primary function is to help someone find something. The ads are related to what you are trying to find, so they are sometimes actually relevant as part of your search, and to the function for which you were using Google. So an ad supported environment for search can actually be beneficial to the searcher. For Facebook, that's not the case. I go to Facebook to see pictures and status updates from Friends and Family. I'm not looking for anything to buy, or for airfare prices, or movie tickets, etc. So I naturally tune out the right side of the Facebook stream and never - ever - click on any ads. And about 99.9999% of the time I completely forget they are there. However, when searching on Google, if I can't find exactly what I'm looking for I will frequently scan the ads on the right to see what's there. And that's been helpful, so I know I'll do it again. Facebook needs to take advantage of something they have that others sites don't: real identities. They could totally kill eBay. My wife sometimes talks me out of using eBay because we just don't know if we can trust the person on the other side of the transaction. Facebook can fix that. You can see who the people are, know who they are connected to (use a 6 degrees of separation connection lookup, etc) and be assured (on some level) of a buyer's/seller's identity (trustworthiness) in a transaction. Or something similar. They could then take a cut o the sale just like eBay. And I don't mean relegate this function to some part of Facebook no one would notice, but add a genuinely first class feature to enable something like that (or another equally useful commerce related activity).