Debate has been raging for a while now about how/when/if Social Media services such as Twitter and Facebook can find a way to successfully monetise their offerings.  The last few weeks have seen some interesting developments when it comes to the possible monetisation of social media.  On Thursday Twitter announced the launch of location based services, geo-targeting of adverts is something that has been proposed as a potential source of advertising revenue for Twitter.  Many advertisers I'm sure will be able to readily see the potential that "reading tweets from anyone in your neighborhood or city—whether you follow them or not" offers them in terms geo-targeting tweeted adverts.

A couple of weeks ago Andy Beal also revealed that Facebook are to ban all commercial activity on profiles.  The implications of this are that the only area of Facebook where commercial activity could take place is on business pages.  My thinking is that by doing this Facebook are making a move toward charging businesses for a business page presence on the site.  If businesses see a value in promoting their services through their facebook page and come to rely on it as a source of revenue they are more likely to be happy to shell out some money to keep it.  By restricting commercial activity on Facebook to business pages Facebook are moving their business advertisers in this direction.

So what do you think?  Will Twitter ever find a way to make money other than through investment?  Are Facebook really looking to monetize pages or am I just being cynical?