By David Peralty
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

I have three stories about Facebook today, one focusing on its ads, one on its apps, and one on its popularity.

The first comes to us from TechCrunch and talks about how Facebook Flyers can allow you to target your advertising on the site to certain demographics. Here is a bit from the post:

Flyers let you target by country, city, gender, age range, political views, relationship status, education level, workplace affiliation, or any keyword in a person’s stated interests. It’s that last option that could be really powerful. For instance, simply putting in different keywords into the Facebook Flyers ad-targeting page reveals that of the 19,951,900 Facebook members in the U.S., 101,000 are into rock climbing, 411,000 are into cooking, and 706,160 people are into traveling. Such targeting could theoretically allow advertisers to reach exactly the people they want, instead of the scatter-shot approach favored today.

This is something that many websites with a diverse membership have been trying to effectively do, and while some have succeeded, I think that this might become the most detailed version of targeted advertising.

The second story comes from a new service site called APPMRKT, which allows people to buy and sell Facebook applications. Currently, there are only five advertisements for applications on their sales page, with features ranging from a 924 user GTalk application that would allow a web based Google instant messenger client in your Facebook page, to a 52,000 user Friends Quiz application. Prices also range from a buy it now of $1200 to $20,000 depending on the popularity of the application and its included features.

The third, and final story comes from TechCrunch once again, this time focusing on its popularity, and growth. It seems that while MySpace is still the most popular social networking site, Facebook is coming up fast in rankings.

From the article:

New figures released by HitWise show that in Australia at least, MySpace is now losing market share as the Facebook juggernaut continues. Traffic to MySpace in Australia has dropped 5% as Facebook has tripled its traffic in the 10 weeks to October 13, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Anyone want to take a guess at how long it will be before Facebook overtakes Fox’s MySpace?