I've been asking a lot of people recently how they feel about ads on social networking sites such as Facebook, specifically if they've ever clicked on one.  Still can't find one person that's said yes.

Someone mentioned that we are so used to seeing ads in our daily lives, that we have grown accustomed to them and almost completely ignore them when online.  Even when the user is forced to interact with the ad, it makes us dislike them even more.  I completely agree with that and still wonder how sites such as Facebook and Twitter are going to monetize off of a free service that just works.

That said, I happened to actually notice an ad on Facebook tonight. Not because it peaked my interest or a catchy graphic caught my attention, there was a simple z-index issue that allowed a flash ad to show above the Online Friends pop-out window.  That rarely happens on large social networking websites, yet:

Seems like someone over at Facebook messed up.  If you've never heard the term z-index before, it is basically what allows elements on a website to show above or below each other within the same space.  In this case, the flash ad's z-index was set incorrectly and allowed the ad to show above the pop-out window, when the window should always show first. When designing websites,  z-index issues are usually arise when dealing with drop down menus that cover Flash files such as in this case.  I then refreshed the page, and the next ad's z-index was fine: