So its fairly breaking news, but Marc Zuckerberg has just outlined Facebook’s best attempt at monetization, which involves three separate entities — allowing advertisers to build their own pages, facilitating the engagement between Facebook fans and those advertisers (and the promotion thereof on their own profiles), and perhaps most importantly, something called Social Ads.

Social Ads are ad units that will be customized to a users interests based on the kind of information that that user has given Facebook, with these ad units appearing both in the profiles and as banner ads.

Now, if I was an advertiser, like the 40 some-odd partners that Facebook has, I’d be salivating at the possibility of having unprecedented access to such a large petri-dish of consumers — and the ability to have unprecedented ability to *track* those actions in some kind of cookies/behavioural-based mish-mash of technology (haven’t actually heard what this will be).

But if I was someone who really enjoyed Facebook, someone who enjoyed their sense of privacy, and who might feel threatened, and perhaps angered, at their attempts at cashing in at the expense of the relationships I have — well, I who knows what I might do?

After all, I don’t think any one begrudges Facebook for wanting to monetize its social capital.

What I think people *WILL* take exception to is how these intrusive these ads will feel, how some people will feel like their privacy will be violated for the sake of “highly targeted ad units”, and perhaps, most importantly, how people will *not *be able to opt out.

That’s right. According to Eric Schonfeld’s transcript:

“People will not be able to opt out of these social ads or turn them off, at least for now, unless they stop revealing information about themselves on Facebook. Says Zuckerberg: “It is an ad-supported service. It is a free service.”

Now, its hard to read into what someone else has transcribed, but not only does it sound wrong that you’re not able to opt out of an ad service that is based on your personal data and relationships — but it also sounds, quite frankly, a little arrogant.

What happens now is too nascent to know how things will turn out. But with these changes Facebook will arrive at a crossroads. The question remains, I think is the following: Will people be enjoying Facebook for its benefits to be bothered — or, will lock-in into the Facebook network be too strong — for people to notice, or care, that these kinds of changes will be made?

Too early to tell, I know … but all it would take, I think, is for a few liberally-minded individuals to act like the spark when all of this rolls out in earnest, because something tells me there is a whole lot of tinder that is liable to go up pretty darn quick if given the opportunity.

Bonus: Valleywag has the low-down on how your privacy is an illusion at Facebook

Old-News: You already knew that Facebook pretty much owns everything you put on your profile, right?