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This reminds me again of a problem I'm seeing on the Web. Every time a social network springs up, it seeks to "connect users" and "build communities." And every

This reminds me again of a problem I'm seeing on the Web. Every time a social network springs up, it seeks to "connect users" and "build communities." And every time it reaches critical mass, it tries to use its users as a product to be sold to advertisers. The only exception is Wikipedia, which the author of this article brings up, but as Wikipedia is more of a collaborative content platform than a social network I'll just relegate that to a tangential concern. Is it not possible to create a social network where the product is the social network? Perhaps not. App.net attempted this, and wasn't able to generate enough money to both keep the lights on and pay its employees. As someone who once founded a company that published game books, I'm acutely aware of the fact that people are rarely willing to buy content in this age of free information. So what, then, would make them willing to pay to be a part of a social network?

m52go 11y ago
I don't understand why there can't be a social network that simply charges its biggest beneficiaries. That is, make it free for every user until that user reaches a certain level of influence. That way, you can grow without charging anything and then charge those who a) value it the most and b) have the money & reason to pay to sustain their influence. Why can't Twitter create a pricing model for everyone with over 1m followers? Why can't Facebook keep its service free for consumers but charge organizations? The massive power of huge social followings (organic reach--without ads) is worth so much but valued at ZERO by social networks. I think it's a huge missed opportunity that is resulting in diminished value for everyone.
- jamesjyu 11y ago
  "Why can't Facebook keep its service free for consumers but charge organizations" But that is exactly how Facebook works: they charge organizations money to reach relevant users. Users are never charged.
  - m52go 11y ago
    I was trying to say that organizations should be charged to be a part of Facebook, period. Whether they choose to advertise or not. In a perfect world, there wouldn't be any advertising on Facebook. Just billions of people using it for free, subsidized by companies that pay to be on it.
    - jamesjyu 11y ago
      That is pretty much equivalent. Those organizations would join Facebook for some reason. And that reason is to reach consumers. FB would end up giving orgs more powerful ways to promote Pages and then you end up with essentially ads.
- comex 11y ago
  It's like peering. If you're that popular, Twitter is providing significant value to you, but you're also providing a lot of value to Twitter by being a reason for people to use the service (i.e. to read your tweets). Katy Perry needs Twitter a whole lot less than Twitter needs Katy Perry. Plus, not everyone popular on Twitter has a lot of money - a recent counterexample is Edward Snowden.
  - m52go 11y ago
    Yeah but I'm sure Katy Perry gets enough out of the service to pay it $10k a year. For example. Total revenue would be lower, yes, but that should be matched by cost-cutting. These companies' head-counts are bloated compared to the services they offer. I know there's a lot more to Twitter than the simplistic short-messaging system it seems to be from the outside (speed, scaling, etc)...but does it really need over 4,000 people to run it? I highly doubt it.
    - matart 11y ago
      This sounds like charging someone to bring you business. Katy Perry convinces a lot of people to use twitter and still has to pay to bring in revenue. If this was the same for car sales, why would anyone recommend cars?
    - mosquito242 11y ago
      Yeah but that's a very risky move. If even 50% of the power users pay, then twitter still loses 50% of it's key content, which costs it users, which then means the remaining power users are less interested in paying and so on.
    - notahacker 11y ago
      $10k a year to keep advertising not sanctioned by Katy Perry's management off her Twitter feed might get a bite or two....
- randomname2 11y ago
  Craigslist does this, to an extent.
- pjc50 11y ago
  This is the wrong way round. Charging people to be popular on twitter would turn it into an advertising platform and drive away the most interesting grassroots users. The benefit flows from the popular 'content creators' to the people who follow but aren't themselves followed. My own preferred model for charging would be the transferrable 'premium' account: essentially a visible flag on the account that anyone can pay for, like reddit gold. Encourage people to pay for accounts that they enjoy following.
  - scholia 11y ago
    Twitter could actually charge people to have their accounts Verified(assuming they are using their real names). If that idea is successful, they could let verified users limit their twitstream to show only Verified users. Then, perhaps, you might stop seeing most of the random crap posted by trolls, who can mob you today, even if they don't follow you and you don't follow them.
    - dceddia 11y ago
      I thought they already charged some good amount of money to get that "verified" check, no?
      - mckee1 11y ago
        I know someone with a verified status on Twitter and they did not pay anything.
    - pjc50 11y ago
      I'd very much like to separate "paid" from "is using real name"; many of the twitter accounts I follow aren't people under their real names.
      - scholia 11y ago
        Yes, fair point. At the moment, "verified" means you are the real Donald Trump, or whoever, not a parody account. What would you be verifying if it wasn't an identifiable name (real name, stage name, etc)? Under what I was suggesting, you would still be able to follow whoever you liked, whether verified or not. However, you would be able to block all the unverified users....
- GrinningFool 11y ago
  > Why can't Twitter create a pricing model for everyone with over 1m followers? You'd essentially be creating an incentive to not gain popularity - I suspect that would stifle any kind of large-scale adoption.
- angry-hacker 11y ago
  But Facebook is free for consumers and costs for organizations. The reach is not valued zero at all, I have no idea what are you talking about, you just described the way FB works. Without paying it's impossible to get your message out to your page fans, it doesn't work that way for long time anymore.
- s73v3r 11y ago
  I don't think there's ever been a social network that has successfully charged users to use it.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    Suicide Girls? NSFW ("Come for the boobs, stay for the community").
  - bmm6o 11y ago
    MetaFilter charges a membership fee, though they rely on ad revenue to keep it running. And it has to be pointed out that it was pretty close to shutting down last year (ad revenue was way down).
smacktoward 11y ago
> what, then, would make them willing to pay to be a part of a social network? At minimum it has to be free to get started, with the payment happening later as an add-on or up-sell. App.net put the payment up front, you couldn't use it until you paid, with the (predictable) result that nobody used it. The model to look at is probably the tawdry world of "free-to-play" gaming on mobile, sadly.
- sp332 11y ago
  App.net added a free tier in February 2013, and hit 100,000 users just two months later. By the end of 2014 they said that renewals were so low the site would be put in maintenance mode. So people are willing to pay for something, just not what App.net turned out to be. Or, they are willing to pay a little but not enough to actually afford the developers.
teaneedz 11y ago
Try Ello. I love it's anti-ad tech stand.
- GrinningFool 11y ago
  So I read the Ello manifesto - I like it. So I clicked the button that says "I Agree" [I am not the product]. And what happens? I get a bevy of links to share my sentiment on every major social network - the same ones they just pointed out are all about selling my usage and posting habits. I don't know if this is deliberate irony or just something that wasn't thought through very well...
  - teaneedz 11y ago
    I think the point is that users can choose to share on ad networks if the desire or not. I often share stuff to Twitter. However, at its core, Ello itself is ad-tech-free. It's an oasis where I can relax and never worry about targeted ads, tracking or deteriorating UX because of ad tech. The team seams to really care about this and has been transparent and responsive in my experience.
- teaneedz 11y ago
  Twitter leaves me SMH, but Ello consistently impresses me with its transparency. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id
hodgesrm 11y ago
Answer: Many of these businesses are trying to monetize two-sided networks.[1] It's a much more scalable economic model than just selling a product (what you are describing) and works well for the big guys like Facebook and Google. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-sided_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-sided_market

m52go 11y ago

I don't understand why there can't be a social network that simply charges its biggest beneficiaries. That is, make it free for every user until that user reaches a certain level of influence. That way, you can grow without charging anything and then charge those who a) value it the most and b) have the money & reason to pay to sustain their influence. Why can't Twitter create a pricing model for everyone with over 1m followers? Why can't Facebook keep its service free for consumers but charge organizations? The massive power of huge social followings (organic reach--without ads) is worth so much but valued at ZERO by social networks. I think it's a huge missed opportunity that is resulting in diminished value for everyone.

jamesjyu 11y ago
"Why can't Facebook keep its service free for consumers but charge organizations" But that is exactly how Facebook works: they charge organizations money to reach relevant users. Users are never charged.
- m52go 11y ago
  I was trying to say that organizations should be charged to be a part of Facebook, period. Whether they choose to advertise or not. In a perfect world, there wouldn't be any advertising on Facebook. Just billions of people using it for free, subsidized by companies that pay to be on it.
  - jamesjyu 11y ago
    That is pretty much equivalent. Those organizations would join Facebook for some reason. And that reason is to reach consumers. FB would end up giving orgs more powerful ways to promote Pages and then you end up with essentially ads.
comex 11y ago
It's like peering. If you're that popular, Twitter is providing significant value to you, but you're also providing a lot of value to Twitter by being a reason for people to use the service (i.e. to read your tweets). Katy Perry needs Twitter a whole lot less than Twitter needs Katy Perry. Plus, not everyone popular on Twitter has a lot of money - a recent counterexample is Edward Snowden.
- m52go 11y ago
  Yeah but I'm sure Katy Perry gets enough out of the service to pay it $10k a year. For example. Total revenue would be lower, yes, but that should be matched by cost-cutting. These companies' head-counts are bloated compared to the services they offer. I know there's a lot more to Twitter than the simplistic short-messaging system it seems to be from the outside (speed, scaling, etc)...but does it really need over 4,000 people to run it? I highly doubt it.
  - matart 11y ago
    This sounds like charging someone to bring you business. Katy Perry convinces a lot of people to use twitter and still has to pay to bring in revenue. If this was the same for car sales, why would anyone recommend cars?
  - mosquito242 11y ago
    Yeah but that's a very risky move. If even 50% of the power users pay, then twitter still loses 50% of it's key content, which costs it users, which then means the remaining power users are less interested in paying and so on.
  - notahacker 11y ago
    $10k a year to keep advertising not sanctioned by Katy Perry's management off her Twitter feed might get a bite or two....
randomname2 11y ago
Craigslist does this, to an extent.
pjc50 11y ago
This is the wrong way round. Charging people to be popular on twitter would turn it into an advertising platform and drive away the most interesting grassroots users. The benefit flows from the popular 'content creators' to the people who follow but aren't themselves followed. My own preferred model for charging would be the transferrable 'premium' account: essentially a visible flag on the account that anyone can pay for, like reddit gold. Encourage people to pay for accounts that they enjoy following.
- scholia 11y ago
  Twitter could actually charge people to have their accounts Verified(assuming they are using their real names). If that idea is successful, they could let verified users limit their twitstream to show only Verified users. Then, perhaps, you might stop seeing most of the random crap posted by trolls, who can mob you today, even if they don't follow you and you don't follow them.
  - dceddia 11y ago
    I thought they already charged some good amount of money to get that "verified" check, no?
    - mckee1 11y ago
      I know someone with a verified status on Twitter and they did not pay anything.
  - pjc50 11y ago
    I'd very much like to separate "paid" from "is using real name"; many of the twitter accounts I follow aren't people under their real names.
    - scholia 11y ago
      Yes, fair point. At the moment, "verified" means you are the real Donald Trump, or whoever, not a parody account. What would you be verifying if it wasn't an identifiable name (real name, stage name, etc)? Under what I was suggesting, you would still be able to follow whoever you liked, whether verified or not. However, you would be able to block all the unverified users....
GrinningFool 11y ago
> Why can't Twitter create a pricing model for everyone with over 1m followers? You'd essentially be creating an incentive to not gain popularity - I suspect that would stifle any kind of large-scale adoption.
angry-hacker 11y ago
But Facebook is free for consumers and costs for organizations. The reach is not valued zero at all, I have no idea what are you talking about, you just described the way FB works. Without paying it's impossible to get your message out to your page fans, it doesn't work that way for long time anymore.
s73v3r 11y ago
I don't think there's ever been a social network that has successfully charged users to use it.
- DanBC 11y ago
  Suicide Girls? NSFW ("Come for the boobs, stay for the community").
- bmm6o 11y ago
  MetaFilter charges a membership fee, though they rely on ad revenue to keep it running. And it has to be pointed out that it was pretty close to shutting down last year (ad revenue was way down).

smacktoward 11y ago

> what, then, would make them willing to pay to be a part of a social network? At minimum it has to be free to get started, with the payment happening later as an add-on or up-sell. App.net put the payment up front, you couldn't use it until you paid, with the (predictable) result that nobody used it. The model to look at is probably the tawdry world of "free-to-play" gaming on mobile, sadly.

sp332 11y ago
App.net added a free tier in February 2013, and hit 100,000 users just two months later. By the end of 2014 they said that renewals were so low the site would be put in maintenance mode. So people are willing to pay for something, just not what App.net turned out to be. Or, they are willing to pay a little but not enough to actually afford the developers.

teaneedz 11y ago

Try Ello. I love it's anti-ad tech stand.

GrinningFool 11y ago
So I read the Ello manifesto - I like it. So I clicked the button that says "I Agree" [I am not the product]. And what happens? I get a bevy of links to share my sentiment on every major social network - the same ones they just pointed out are all about selling my usage and posting habits. I don't know if this is deliberate irony or just something that wasn't thought through very well...
- teaneedz 11y ago
  I think the point is that users can choose to share on ad networks if the desire or not. I often share stuff to Twitter. However, at its core, Ello itself is ad-tech-free. It's an oasis where I can relax and never worry about targeted ads, tracking or deteriorating UX because of ad tech. The team seams to really care about this and has been transparent and responsive in my experience.
teaneedz 11y ago
Twitter leaves me SMH, but Ello consistently impresses me with its transparency. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id

hodgesrm 11y ago

Answer: Many of these businesses are trying to monetize two-sided networks.[1] It's a much more scalable economic model than just selling a product (what you are describing) and works well for the big guys like Facebook and Google. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-sided_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-sided_market