You cannot escape from ads wherever you turn – they will soon descend upon your news feed in Facebook, the world’s most popular social networking site with more than 800 million users and counting. According to Facebook, it will start to show “Sponsored Stories” in the news feeds on your Facebook page from January next year onwards. According to a Facebook spokesperson, “Starting early next year, we will gradually begin showing Sponsored Stories in News Feed. Our goal is to do this thoughtfully and slowly. We hope to show people no more than one Sponsored Story in their News Feeds per day and the story will be clearly labeled.”
Sad to say, users will be unable to block the Sponsored Stories from appearing in their news feed, but you can “X” out of individual ads. Is this a precursor to a paid scheme for Facebook that sees users fork out dough for an ad-free experience? Do expect a fair bit of backlash from users, although chances are pretty good this very group will continue to use Facebook after venting their frustration on, where else, but Facebook. Don’t you think that this will be rather ironic?
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