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> Facebook doesn't make any money from social media, they make money from side businesses that are tacked onto their social media platform. Newspapers never ma

> Facebook doesn't make any money from social media, they make money from side businesses that are tacked onto their social media platform. Newspapers never made money, they just made money from side businesses that were tacked onto their social media platform. TV shows don't make money, they just make money from side businesses that are tacked onto their shows. Just because you don't like a business model doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Advertising has been a successful business model for literally centuries.

pdonis 10y ago
> Newspapers never made money Sure they did; they sold subscriptions, and if you didn't have a subscription and wanted a copy, you bought one. > TV shows don't make money Sure they do; practically nobody gets broadcast TV any more, it's all paid cable or paid satellite or something of that sort. Granted that's a very indirect way of paying for individual shows, but now you can even do that directly with, for example, Netflix. > Advertising has been a successful business model for literally centuries. I agree that advertising has been around for many centuries, but it hasn't been a business model for most of that time; it's been a cost of doing business. According to Wikipedia[1], the first newspaper to have paid advertising was in 1836. And the first businesses to make money solely from advertising revenue (which is what "advertising as a successful business model" means to me) are much more recent than that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising
- morgante 10y ago
  Just because advertising isn't their only revenue source doesn't mean that it wasn't intrinsic to maintaining the profitability and viability of numerous media organizations. > And the first businesses to make money solely from advertising revenue Strictly speaking, that means Facebook is also not using an advertising business model.
beedogs 10y ago
> Advertising has been a successful business model for literally centuries. Surely this explains why nearly every news site out there has been throwing up ad-blocker nag screens over the past few years. They must really be raking that revenue in! Not a troubled financial model at all, no sir!
dingo_bat 10y ago
Same for google. They don't make any money from search. They earn by selling ads. This is just a stupid exercise you can do with any company. Microsoft doesn't make any money from software. It makes all its money from sabotaging and undercutting its competitors.
simbalion 10y ago
Social Media faces some special challenges, Twitter is a great example. In the past year they've made various changes to their platform, in an effort to drive up their revenue. All of the changes they made were loathed by users, which reduces their membership and hurts their revenue. This is my opinion, I might be wrong, but I think social media is not a viable business. I do not believe anyone has shown a way to monetize it yet. Facebook hasn't monetized social media, they've monetized Facebook, one fraction of which is a social media product, which makes no money. Social media only exists, I believe, because the technical hurdles of setting up a personal blog were too great at one point. But it is becoming easier and cheaper. I think in the long term people will abandon corporate controlled products like Facebook and Twitter in favor of user controlled products like Wordpress. The 'following' system is the only feature which keeps corporate social media afloat, and RSS or something like it will always be around as a viable alternative.

pdonis 10y ago

> Newspapers never made money Sure they did; they sold subscriptions, and if you didn't have a subscription and wanted a copy, you bought one. > TV shows don't make money Sure they do; practically nobody gets broadcast TV any more, it's all paid cable or paid satellite or something of that sort. Granted that's a very indirect way of paying for individual shows, but now you can even do that directly with, for example, Netflix. > Advertising has been a successful business model for literally centuries. I agree that advertising has been around for many centuries, but it hasn't been a business model for most of that time; it's been a cost of doing business. According to Wikipedia[1], the first newspaper to have paid advertising was in 1836. And the first businesses to make money solely from advertising revenue (which is what "advertising as a successful business model" means to me) are much more recent than that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_advertising

morgante 10y ago
Just because advertising isn't their only revenue source doesn't mean that it wasn't intrinsic to maintaining the profitability and viability of numerous media organizations. > And the first businesses to make money solely from advertising revenue Strictly speaking, that means Facebook is also not using an advertising business model.

beedogs 10y ago

> Advertising has been a successful business model for literally centuries. Surely this explains why nearly every news site out there has been throwing up ad-blocker nag screens over the past few years. They must really be raking that revenue in! Not a troubled financial model at all, no sir!

dingo_bat 10y ago

Same for google. They don't make any money from search. They earn by selling ads. This is just a stupid exercise you can do with any company. Microsoft doesn't make any money from software. It makes all its money from sabotaging and undercutting its competitors.

simbalion 10y ago

Social Media faces some special challenges, Twitter is a great example. In the past year they've made various changes to their platform, in an effort to drive up their revenue. All of the changes they made were loathed by users, which reduces their membership and hurts their revenue. This is my opinion, I might be wrong, but I think social media is not a viable business. I do not believe anyone has shown a way to monetize it yet. Facebook hasn't monetized social media, they've monetized Facebook, one fraction of which is a social media product, which makes no money. Social media only exists, I believe, because the technical hurdles of setting up a personal blog were too great at one point. But it is becoming easier and cheaper. I think in the long term people will abandon corporate controlled products like Facebook and Twitter in favor of user controlled products like Wordpress. The 'following' system is the only feature which keeps corporate social media afloat, and RSS or something like it will always be around as a viable alternative.