Facebook efforts hint at growing ad clout

Facebook's move to export its social networking features across the Internet could bolster the company's advertising business and pose an increasing threat to the Web's reigning advertising giants. Facebook, which has more than 400 million registered users, is the No 1 website in the United States by page views, according to comScore. But it is a relatively small player in the online ad market, where Google Inc's paid search business dominates, and a variety of Web portals and ad networks battle over billions of dollars in graphical display advertising. With its new initiative to expand beyond the borders of Facebook.com, however, Facebook has created the framework for a new generation of highly targeted ads. The so-called Open Graph project weaves Facebook's popular social networking capabilities directly into third-party websites. A visitor to CNN.com, for instance, can click a button to "like" certain news articles, and see which of their Facebook friends have endorsed content on other websites. "Having all this data and all this time from consumers almost can't help but to position Facebook in a very strong way for online advertisers," said Gartner analyst Augie Ray.