Facebook: “We’re a technology company, we’re not a web site.”

Posted on Sep 22 in Social by Sean P. Dillon

This morning, Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg shared the company’s view of advertising and the role they play.  Some of the questions were centered around Pages.  One audience member asked, “How do big brands connect with their fans on Facebook, without being overly promotional?”  Sheryl’s response was, “They do it around authentic news and authentic things or authentic offers that people want to see; ads that they’re interested in.”  Keep this in mind as you build a fan page for your Page on Facebook.

One of my favorite parts of this clip is Facebook’s view of itself as a company.  Sandberg remarked, “Our business model and our view of ourselves is that we’re a technology company, we’re not a web site.”  I find it interesting that they see things one way, while many of their actual users consider Facebook to be just a web site.

Being about as prolific as Google, Facebook is here to stay, having reached 300 million members and reporting a new cashflow-positive status early this week.