According to Facebook supremo Mark Zuckerberg, "Media changes once every hundred years". This was the 23 year old multi-billionaires prediction in 2007, suggesting a sea change in the way online business monetise their users through advertising. However, the young whipper-snapper appears to have been caught with his pants down as 'Valleywag' are reporting today that Facebook are leading the pack in a global online advertising scam. Could this really be true?

I for one am an enormous Facebook junkie and loathe to believe of any tactical trickery or potential fraud. However, according to these reports, The Sunday Morning Herald have busted Facebook running 'get rich quick on Google' adverts within the site. This has been supported by the Google gods who have stepped up to the plate to confirm that these activities are in fact fraudulent. So, how can Facebook possibly defend these claims? Well, apparently, these incidences of fraud are 'isolated' and 'removed' once detected. The plot thickens….

Unfortunately for Facebook, this response has not cut the mustard, as the same adverts keep appearing. According to 'online scams exposed', this fraudulent activity has actually been fuelled by a direct shift in policy by the social networking gargantuan themselves.

So why would Facebook allow these dodgy advertisements to be displayed? The answer is simple. For every user that joins the site, Facebook is losing money. For the boy wonder Zuckerberg, every time someone creates an account, there is a requirement to up-scale the hardware infrastructure to accommodate for the extra traffic and bandwidth consumption. Unfortunately for the ludicrously opulent young scamp, his revenues are not keeping up to speed with the seemingly exponential growth in his user base.

So, rather than creating a legitimate means of monetising its users, Facebook are stimulating a culture for advertising scams to bolster dwindling revenue streams. Instead of delivering this centuries technological sea change, Facebook executives are facilitating and encouraging scam artists to prey on its swollen user base. This will only serve to provide a short-term revenue generation solution and create more cash for Mr Zuckerberg in his own quest for a quick fix. This could be the sea change that he so eloquently referred to, however, its not one that is welcome amongst the Facebook community or the preying media horde.

Facebook need to respond to this situation quick and fast. One of the fundamental components of the sites success has been its ability to keep a clean image as well as a clean site in terms of its design and navigation. Bebo and MySpace have both suffered at the hands of 'spam artists' (do you like what I've done there?) determined to sell you cheap 'performance enhancing' products. A clean layout and attitude towards these issues has set Facebook aside and largely been responsible for the phenomenal recent migration onto its platform. Mr Zuckerberg, please stamp this nonsense out! For the sake of your users and your own ridiculously over sized bank balance, please leave the scams for the TITS (Trotters Independent Trading Services) of this world…

You have been warned…

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