Online ads on Facebook are nothing new but the idea of monetizing Facebook in other ways is something the social media giant is looking to accomplish in the year ahead.

With 350 million unique users globally, creating e-commerce opportunities on Facebook makes sense. Brands and their customers are already on the site. Mashable.com reports that the "average Facebook user visits the site at least once a day and spends an astounding 55 minutes engaging friends and family."

Instead of Facebook users having to leave the social network to make a purchase, the social network can provide an online shopping channel to users within the site itself. As Mashable.com states:

Imagine an integrated, one-click solution whereby your friends see your recent purchases (because you were incentivized by the brand to share your information) in their feed and are able to simply point, click, and purchase the same item.

For e-tailers, many of which may already have a Facebook Fanpage, this represents a captured, engaged audience ready to take the next step and make a purchase and then share that purchase with their contacts. The appeal to Facebook users can be made even more compelling through unique promotions and discounts offered through contextual marketing and personalization.

Of course Facebook stands to profit, most likely through a percentage of the sales or charging a fixed rate for storefronts. While it will be interesting to see how social commerce emerges on Facebook, it will also be a test of how the social media giant will address new privacy and security concerns that may arise.

Facebook’s foray into social commerce has already started. In December 2009, Brian Walker at Forrester Research wrote an interesting article on Facebook’s social commerce experiment with clothing retailer The Limited, and how many retailers will look to partner with e-commerce vendors in 2010 on similar social commerce activities.