We have already talked about how advertising is changing in this social networked world. If you were a company, let's say 20 years ago, and you had a new product in the market your options were limited.

You could do is to use T.V., newspapers, magazines, billboards to get the attention of the people. Now let's say that your competitor had a similar new product to advertise. The only way to beat him was to spend more money than him making your ads... bigger! He who had the bigger... budget to spend for advertising usually was the winner, he got the attention of more people and got more sales.

But now the world has changed. People got used to advertising. People are expecting from the companies to say that the have the best product in the market. It is more difficult to get their attention to your product.

Social networks changed the way we interact with our friends. But social networks now are changing and the way advertising targets users. For example let's say that you have a restaurant and you want to make a special offer for people who have their birthdays so they can have their party in your store. In the "old days" you could buy advertising space to magazines. But there was no way that your advertisement could target your audience, people who had their birthday that day.

Up until social networks came. You can now place an ad in Facebook and you can set it to be seen only by people who have their birthdays! Impressive?

Did you know for example that there around 100 men, users of Facebook, who live in Athens, are single and have their birthday today?