Facebook is less about business development or forming partnerships than establishing itself as an identity platform, notes Maz Shirafi, Sr. Manager of Monetization, who was speaking at BIA/Kelsey’s ILM East conference this week in Boston.

Sharafi also noted that Facebook’s advertising products will evolve quite dramatically during the next several years. Its current slate of sponsored stories mark the beginning of “the direction we want to head towards,” he said. “The ad unit in the sponsored stories don’t have any marketing message at all. Just the message.”

Indeed, the notion of corporations pointing to a website is “a dying one,” said Sharafi. A Facebook page can be compelling in its authenticity especially “versus marketing speak or a static website”. Toyota is among the brands that have picked up on this. Toyota doesn’t advertise a website, he says. They advertise its Facebook page.