If you never heard of Facebook, you must be far away from the web those days. At first it was presented as just a social-networking website for friends to share stuff and stay in contact. But my sarcastic side always looked at it as a very powerful eMarketing tool in progress…and with the fabulous success it is having guest what? Facebook began yesterday notifying members they can choose to keep their listings private or to allow Facebook to make their name and profile picture available when outsiders search the site.

It might surely angry the privacy lovers and the naive one but Facebook is now moving to publicize member profiles. Of course in the wave of  what is the next NEW THING, Facebook wants to really enter the race and the question now is: Is Facebook the new MySpace or LinkedIn or Flickr or a  little bit of all of them integrated? Or just nothing really new, but just a great marketing idea??

Anyway you might like it or hate it or not bother at all, but it is a real Web 2.0 application and approach that seem to work. For me I am still struggling to find out the real thing about Facebook on a private side. I am struggling to find out the interest you can have in the ‘poke your fiend’ or the ‘change your friends in Zombies’. On the contrary as an eMarketing professional I can see lots of potential in the future for campaigns, online surveys, testing new cool tools, reaching some communities, etc. The only question will be to know if the Facebookers will follow and agree to that path…

More info here and there.