The New York Times' Somini Sengupta suggested they 'offered early signs that the company was cracking the mobile revenue code.' The numbers exceeded investor expectations. Most news accounts led with the figure everyone is watching: 30 percent of Facebook's revenue came from mobile advertising, up from 23 percent in the same quarter last year. On Wednesday, at around the same time I was getting my rant on, Facebook released its quarterly earnings numbers. When your revenue model directly contradicts the essence of what your site delivers to users, you've got a big problem. Which, by their very nature, must get in the way. Facebook is successful because it excels at making it easy for us to share information. But it may be particularly hard for Facebook. That's a hard problem to solve - as everyone in any business dependent on online ad revenue will acknowledge. Facebook's challenge is to find the proper balance between giving users the best online experience possible and maximizing advertising revenue. Therefore, Facebook can't make it too easy for Facebook users to block unwanted ads. The seething paradox at the heart of Facebook is that for the social network to justify its market valuation and deliver its investors the returns that they crave, Facebook must shovel a whole hell of a lot of ads at its users.

But I certainly don't expect the kind of control that will eliminate every trace of ad-related aggravation. I look forward to better controls over Facebook's mobile ads that will aid me in my doomed quest to eradicate all online dating propositions. Last night was the first time Facebook sought me out after a story was published. I've written about Facebook many times for Salon. If you want proof that how users feel about mobile advertisements is the single most critical issue determining Facebook's future, that midnight email from P.R.

The more important news is Facebook's decision that it needed to respond to my blog post at all. (To be fair, Facebook's spokeperson acknowledged that the company's ad-delivery algorithms are not 'perfect.') As I wrote on Wednesday, Facebook's track record on the desktop advertising experience leaves something to be desired. Individual Facebook users can decide for themselves how excited they are by this pledge. These controls will be similar to those that currently exist for the desktop Facebook experience. The big news: Facebook promises that within just a couple of weeks mobile users will get new controls that will allow us to block specific advertisers. The spokesperson sought an opportunity to chat about the work Facebook was doing 'to improve the controls people have over the ads they see on mobile.' I received an email from a Facebook public relations person just a little before midnight Wednesday, or about 10 hours after I posted my rant about Facebook mobile advertisements and giant-breasted zombie-stalkers.

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