At the moment, the battle is on between those two models of making money from online advertising. If Google’s search engine cast the Internet as an instrument ofsolitary(独居者) exploration, Facebook requires its users to share what they do with their Facebook “friends.” In some ways, the Facebook offering is a test of how valuable the social model of the Internet could be. (来源：www.EnglishCN.com)

According to comScore, a market research firm, Facebook has become the largest platform for display advertising on the Web in the United States; 28 percent of all display ads come to Facebook, followed by Yahoo, which gets less than half that share.

While advertising is its bread and butter, Facebook has sought(寻找) new sources of income by becoming a place where goods and services are bought and sold, whether it is virtual farm animals or real concert tickets.

Analysts expect Facebook to be the driver of more such transactions, using thepersuasive(有说服力的) power of Facebook “friends.” Company officials use the word “frictionless(无摩擦的)” to signal that whatever you watch, read, listen to or buy on Facebook or its partner sites can be displayed automatically for the friends of your choosing.

Chris Cox, the company’s vice president of product, said in a recent interview that this information hoard(贮藏物) was both a blessing and a curse(诅咒) for the company. “The challenge of the information age is what to do with it,” he said.