NEW YORK -- Facebook founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Nov. 6 the launch of Facebook Ads, an advertising system for marketers to be able to target and connect with users.

The Facebook Ads offering lets users learn about new businesses, brands and products through the referrals of their friends.

"Facebook Ads represent a completely new way of advertising online," Mr.Zuckerberg told an audience of more than 250 marketing and advertising executives in New York.

"For the last hundred years media has been pushed out to people, but now marketers are going to be a part of the conversation," he said. "And they're going to do this by using the social graph in the same way our users do."

Facebook Ads launched with three parts. The first part allows businesses to create a way for businesses to build pages on Facebook, letting them to connect with their audiences. The second part is an ad system that spreads brand messages virally through Facebook Social Ads. Finally, there is an interface that allows marketers to access the insights into people's activity on Facebook.

Mr.Zuckerberg said Facebook Pages allows users to interact and affiliate with businesses and organizations in the same way they interact with other Facebook user profiles. More than 100,000 new Facebook Pages launched Nov. 6.

Businesses can start with a blank canvas and add all the information and content they want, including photos, videos, music and Facebook Platform applications.

Developers have created applications to enhance Facebook Pages, such as booking reservations or providing reviews of restaurant pages, buying tickets on a movie page or creating a custom T-shirt.

Companies launching applications for Facebook Pages include Fandango, iLike, Musictoday, OpenTable, SeamlessWeb, Zagat Survey and Zazzle.

Advertising messages will be distributed through the Facebook "social graph," the network of connections through which people communicate and share information. When people engage with a business' Facebook Page, that action will spread information about that firm through the social graph.

Facebook users can interact directly with the business through its Facebook Page by adding reviews, writing on that business' Wall, uploading photos and in any other ways that a business may want to enable.

These actions could appear in users' Mini-Feed and News Feed, Facebook's popular products that allow users to share information with their friends.

"Social actions are powerful because they act as trusted referrals and reinforce the fact that people influence people," Mr. Zuckerberg said. "It's no longer just about messages that are broadcasted out by companies, but increasingly about information that is shared between friends. So we set out to use these social actions to build a new kind of ad system."