The media is abuzz with the latest news from world of social networks: the hiring of Sheryl Sandberg away from Google as the new Chief Operating Officer for Facebook. Sandberg was well respected in her role at Google for building the company’s online sales and operations.

Undoubtedly her job at Facebook will include driving advertising revenue. As I stated when speaking to Ari Levy, from Bloomberg, one of Facebook’s advertising initiatives, Beacon, has ended up being a “bit of a bomb” - and it certainly has been from a media and user privacy point of view. Although the concept behind Beacon (using a consumer’s group of friends to be a focal point for distributing marketing information) is a powerful one, the execution of the concept by Facebook was sloppy.

Sandberg’s real challenge may be becoming a mentor to the young social network and its founder more than anything else. What social networks in general need is a guiding light that can cast a glow into the world of wise and ethical business practises while creating savvy business models that capitalize on the unique set of data that social networks can house. This is an idea that only experience can bring to a resolution, and a problem that any college dropout is unlikely to solve on their own.

The reality of the social networking industry is that too many of the large companies (and their smaller brethren) have become obsessed with the technology they have and the data they can collect to ever think about making money. I’ve talked to all too many social networks, and developers of applications for social networks, who tell me that their only real goal is to get an audience…and then figure out a way to make money.

Building audiences as well as behaviors among that audience has been essential for social networks to date, but building businesses around such functionality is an essential next step. Advertising (meaning free online services for consumers) has been the de facto method for building these businesses to date. The trick for real success will be inextricably linking users to intent and functionality as well as interaction to advertising and revenue. A feat, for now, most successfully accomplished only by Google in the online world.