Facebook and Market Research

In the snows of Davos, the big global community get together, Facebook has announced that it intends to become one of the biggest market research database in the world. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder, thinks he has worked out a way of monetising Facebook's 150 million members by allowing companies to pose questions directly to the online community. How to make money has always been a problem for Zuckerberg although this was eased somewhat by Microsoft's purchase of a 1.6% share valuing Facebook at over $10 billion. This valuation, by any measure, has no foundation and previous attempts by Zuckerberg to make some money out of the site has meet with some pretty stern opposition from the membership. With advertising revenue looking under pressure this year this will need to work for Facebook.