The right hand rail is where the ads are on Facebook. The middle is where your friends are, in your newsfeed and on your wall. But if you “like” companies, the middle becomes prime advertising space, too. Walmart recently created a Facebook App called CrowdSaver that lets users give a thumbs up to deals — like a 42″ Plasma TV for $398. If enough people like the deal, everyone gets it.

It’s a good idea, and a good reason to give WalMart a place in your newsfeed. “You should be able to connect to a business in the same way that you connect to a friend, or a person on the site,” Mark Zuckerberg said in a Wired magazine interview in 2009. “And then that business should be able to publish things in the same way that that happens for people you care about.” It’s a logical thought,  but in practice it can lead to an avalanche of junk. Ultimately, a “Like” list is not that different from a mailing list. So could Facebook become the digital version of junk mail? Nah. For one thing, it’s easy to un-like over-zealous companies. But if Facebook leaves the social advertising boom to manage itself, they could turn into the next MySpace — or just a less satisfying version of itself.

Full Zuckerberg Interview:

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/mark-zuckerberg-speaks/#ixzz13aakDVt5