facebook gift of the day

facebook's gift of the day was a bloody mary. its sold out, so dont bother hurrying over to give the kitschy one dollar gift to one of your friends. thats right, its sold out. 10,000,000 according to the counter under it, but surely that has to be an error right? according to wikipedia ,

'the website had the largest number of registered users among college-focused sites with over 42 million active members worldwide and expects to pass 60 million users by the end of the year (also from non-collegiate networks).^{[3] [4]} From September 2006 to September 2007^[5] it increased its ranking from 60th to 7th most visited web site, and was the number one site for photos in the United States, ahead of public sites such as Flickr, with over 8.5 million photos uploaded daily.'

the amount of money made by facebook is ridiculous. The funniest part is they make it off of people like me and you from advertisements, "gifts" (an icon and a discription...a status symbol?), and now the marketplace.
Microsoft recently invested $240 million in facebook, in return microsoft will get exclusive adverstising for software on facebook. Soon facebook will unveil, a targeted advertising system that will most likely use profile information and applications to direct ads to targeted audiences. good or bad? Just because I'm listed as liking hamburgers does not mean I want to be bombarded by fast food advertising. or... maybe i want to know of the latest promotions at mcdonalds... also, wouldnt it be interesting to change your favorite music and interests on a weekly basis to see which advertising appears. facebook, i believe, is de facto big brother, that is to say regardless of how they use the information that they have, they have it, which in itself, is dangerous enough. in the past, targeted advertising was driven by cookies, which websites were in your history determined which ads you saw. im sure this is not the first case, but obviously it will be the largest, of people "willingly" donating demographic info to a company and that company using it for advertising purposes, (other uses possible). but this isnt mass mailing, m/f, household income, smoker/nonsmoker, how many times a week do you watch television, type of questions. this is data mining at its finest. They have gender, location, education level, hobbies, music, movies, and books. and with the terms of use from third party applications (those not created by facebook) like the politcal party, causes i support, and music i'm listening to now, they will be collecting even more. don't be fooled, no one in the business world with control to that information flow would just let it pass by undocumented.
Its possible that they will not only use the information on a single profile page, but if certain friends have a common demographic profile, and a common friend, then perhaps their friend falls under the same umbrella. (john and tim are both males 21-25 , they both like 50 cent, they have a common friend in frank, who, although is not listed as liking fifty cent, will see the same advertisement for fifty's new greatest hits album "12 hits for fifty cen" along with the other two. i dont really know why i decided to write this, i guess to let you know that facebook is not only making money, but they are gathering information to make MORE money and the terms of use allow them to do pretty much whatever they want with that information. last point. the $240 million that microsoft invested? that $240 million gives them a 1.6 percent stake in the company.. 1.6 percent.