5 ms·

One easy way for them to make money is to charge some nominal fee (say $15/yr) for premium services or ad-free experience. I don't use facebook myself, but most

by cglee 19y ago

One easy way for them to make money is to charge some nominal fee (say $15/yr) for premium services or ad-free experience. I don't use facebook myself, but most of my friends do, and most of them would gladly pay a small fee to just keep using facebook as is, nevermind premium features. Mining the social graph is the holy grail of social networks, but facebook, with its millions of addicted users, doesn't have to solve that problem to generate revenue. It can do so with other means until they figure it out. IMO, Google was in an even more precarious position before it figured out advertising because people could switch easily. Facebook's got its hooks in your life; you can't switch.

Xichekolas 19y ago
I'd pay $15/yr to automatically block all Facebook Apps. Sadly I don't think I'm alone. It was useful before, but it's gotten increasingly spammy.
- dangoldin 19y ago
  Facebook will keep on getting more and more users but it just seems that if they want to get to the next level, they need to do something about this App thing. Once they figure it out I don't doubt they'll be able to offer some type of productivity software - they already have the social infrastructure as well as the users in place for that. When they launched the API and the apps I, as many others, were excited about the entire idea of a facebook OS but it seems that notion is drifting farther and farther away.
rrival 19y ago
But then they'd have some kind of rational yardstick for measuring valuation, and we have that -and- keep Zuckerberg a paper billionaire.
Goladus 19y ago
Facebook is a bit sticky, but switching is not as hard as you might think. If I had to dump facebook, I could probably rebuild my network (as much as I really cared about) pretty quickly starting with just a couple of phone numbers and emails.
- cstejerean 19y ago
  Try deleting your Facebook account and see how much effort it takes. If you're lucky (and the trick that I worked still works) it might be about an hour. Otherwise it might take you days (hint: you have to delete every single photo, comment, wall post, friend, etc one by one and then contact Facebook to have your account deleted).
  - Goladus 19y ago
    You don't have to delete the account to stop using it.
rguzman 19y ago
Agreed on all accounts. I think most facebook users think of it as essential enough to pay something as high as $2-10 per month to use it or some set of premium services. That's a good $100M at least monthly. Of course, making the transition from a 100% free site to a very cheap one is a bit tricky, but learning how to do that is a lesson that the industry as a whole can use and will probably have to do at some point. The product acquires value to users as they use it. Giving it away for free at the beginning and as long as possible while it is manageable to do so is fine and advisable. However, in the long run there is nothing wrong or overly difficult in charging your users a little bit. 37signals is a good example of something similar to this.

by cglee 19y ago

Xichekolas 19y ago

I'd pay $15/yr to automatically block all Facebook Apps. Sadly I don't think I'm alone. It was useful before, but it's gotten increasingly spammy.

dangoldin 19y ago
Facebook will keep on getting more and more users but it just seems that if they want to get to the next level, they need to do something about this App thing. Once they figure it out I don't doubt they'll be able to offer some type of productivity software - they already have the social infrastructure as well as the users in place for that. When they launched the API and the apps I, as many others, were excited about the entire idea of a facebook OS but it seems that notion is drifting farther and farther away.

rrival 19y ago

But then they'd have some kind of rational yardstick for measuring valuation, and we have that -and- keep Zuckerberg a paper billionaire.

Goladus 19y ago

Facebook is a bit sticky, but switching is not as hard as you might think. If I had to dump facebook, I could probably rebuild my network (as much as I really cared about) pretty quickly starting with just a couple of phone numbers and emails.

cstejerean 19y ago
Try deleting your Facebook account and see how much effort it takes. If you're lucky (and the trick that I worked still works) it might be about an hour. Otherwise it might take you days (hint: you have to delete every single photo, comment, wall post, friend, etc one by one and then contact Facebook to have your account deleted).
- Goladus 19y ago
  You don't have to delete the account to stop using it.

rguzman 19y ago

Agreed on all accounts. I think most facebook users think of it as essential enough to pay something as high as $2-10 per month to use it or some set of premium services. That's a good $100M at least monthly. Of course, making the transition from a 100% free site to a very cheap one is a bit tricky, but learning how to do that is a lesson that the industry as a whole can use and will probably have to do at some point. The product acquires value to users as they use it. Giving it away for free at the beginning and as long as possible while it is manageable to do so is fine and advisable. However, in the long run there is nothing wrong or overly difficult in charging your users a little bit. 37signals is a good example of something similar to this.