Seems like there’s a whole bunch of healthy skepticism around Facebook’s attempt at monetizing the relationships people have on Facebook (in addition to yours truly, of course).

• Mat Ingram loathes the idea of “friending” a company like Coca-Cola
• Nick Carr finds the idea of suckering in people to create relationships only to monetize in what seems to be a fairly crass fashion is more News Corp than MySpace
• Mark Evans goes one further and finds that the analogy of Facebook as a your neighborhood drug pusher is more apt.
• Donna Bogatin finds the Social Ads system will be like hanging a “I’m for sale” sign around each of the 50 million Facebook users
• Alex Patrick wonders if we will actually continue to trust our friends as they spam us (unintentionally — or are they?) with ads
• Om Malik queries as to whether this is a privacy nightmare, as opting out (from a “sending out” point of view), may not eliminate the data from being stored *somewhere*

As an update to my prior post, to clarify the business about opting in / out, it sounds like people will be able to control how much they broadcast *out* if they are “friends” or “fans” of particular business or services, or if they decide to shop and purchase at particular e-commerce retailers, i.e. a newsfeed item will pop up amongst your friends if you purchase a book at Amazon, containing a link back to — you guessed it — Amazon.

However, as a “recipient”, you won’t be able to escape, or opt-out, of these broadcasts from your friends.

Again, it makes awesome sense from an advertiser’s point of view from many vantage points, but principally that you’re able to ride along the trust wagon between an established and trusted relationship.

The *problem*, however, is from the users point of view.  Sure, it might be “neat” if my friends know what I just purchased at Amazon.com, but would I still think its neat if I knew that by broadcasting it, I’m acting as an advertisement for Amazon?

That Amazon is directly benefiting — and actually paying for the privilege — of me telling *you* that I love Amazon, in the hopes that you will click on that link in your newsfeed?

I’m thinking that the answer — if people knew it — would probably be no.

But all the punditry in the world won’t really matter at the end of the day.

Perceptions will.

And the perceptions of the Facebook community at large still has to respond to these ads.  Will they be construed as intrusive, or “neat”?  Will the masses really understand the relationships that have been forged between Facebook and its advertising ‘alliance’  that are built on the backs of *their* preferences and their relationships?  Will they tolerate their “friendships” being the vector for ads?

Again, time will tell, and in this case the community’s answer is the one that I’m most curious about, and I suspect its the one that Marc Zuckerburg might secretly be fearing.