5 ms·

Well, they could just make users pay for the service, there is nothing that forces them to collect money from them via the indirect route of ads.

Barrin92 9y ago
Obviously only my personal intuition but I'd wager there's not much of a business in a pay-to-play social network. My FB account is practically on hiatus already and I'd not pay for it. If there would be so much value in a privacy conscious, paid social network that is mass-consumer facing we'd probably have seen it by now.
- danbruc 9y ago
  According to Wikipedia [1] Facebook has a revenue of $40 billion with 2.2 billion monthly active users which translates to pretty much exactly $1.50 per month and user. I would be happy to pay this amount of money if it would ensure that Facebook would not try to do an nasty things with my data. But I also think that Facebook is already on its way down, people seem to have moved on. At least according to their numbers they still seem to grow or at least remain stable but I would guess that this is mostly due to expansion into new markets and if people there go through a similar trajectory it is only a question of time until the last new market starts and eventually stops using Facebook. Here in Germany MeinVZ [2] was the dominant social network until people started moving to Facebook and now MeinVZ is just a ghost town. And it pretty much feels the same with Facebook now, actually already for the last five or so years, people come back and engage more and more infrequently until they eventually disappear. It is much slower as compared to MeinVZ but I am pretty sure it is essentially the same thing. I am not sure where they are all going, maybe Instagram for the younger generation, maybe just WhatsApp for friends in my age, so Facebook the company might just be fine for some more time even if Facebook the network dies. But things have certainly changed from this madness of, I don't know, somewhere between five and ten years ago, when Facebook became inevitable, when it was constantly in thew news, when every ad poster featured a Facebook link. I would neither be surprised if it turned out that Facebook was an essentially quite short-lived onetime phenomenon and people were not that interested in a global community as the social media proponents would want you to believe, nor would I be surprised if every generation had its own Facebook even if just to set themselves apart from the older generation. Why would we even assume that social media is more than a fluke and does not die away just like many things before? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeinVZ https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeinVZ
  - irishsultan 9y ago
    > I would be happy to pay this amount of money if it would ensure that Facebook would not try to do an nasty things with my data. Only if enough of your friends were on it to make it worthwhile, the danger is that many of your contacts would disappear, which would lessen the value of facebook for even more people, leading to a vicious cycle. And even if it didn't happen to your social circle it would stem the inflow of young people even more than is already the case).
- coldtea 9y ago
  >Obviously only my personal intuition but I'd wager there's not much of a business in a pay-to-play social network. Then it's not much of a business, period. In my ideal world, we'd only have businesses where the costs are open and direct (e.g. no "user is the product" or selling of personal data, or even "ad-based"). If they can't make it in this way, then, sorry, they don't have a business model.
  - kwhitefoot 9y ago
    We would never have newspapers in that case. Very few have ever been able to support themselves on the price the user pays.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      >We would never have newspapers in that case. Very few have ever been able to support themselves on the price the user pays. Well, if there are no buyers, then why have a product?
      - warkdarrior 9y ago
        Because some products' value is not understood until after acquisition. Investigative reporting is in that category.

Barrin92 9y ago

Obviously only my personal intuition but I'd wager there's not much of a business in a pay-to-play social network. My FB account is practically on hiatus already and I'd not pay for it. If there would be so much value in a privacy conscious, paid social network that is mass-consumer facing we'd probably have seen it by now.

danbruc 9y ago
According to Wikipedia [1] Facebook has a revenue of $40 billion with 2.2 billion monthly active users which translates to pretty much exactly $1.50 per month and user. I would be happy to pay this amount of money if it would ensure that Facebook would not try to do an nasty things with my data. But I also think that Facebook is already on its way down, people seem to have moved on. At least according to their numbers they still seem to grow or at least remain stable but I would guess that this is mostly due to expansion into new markets and if people there go through a similar trajectory it is only a question of time until the last new market starts and eventually stops using Facebook. Here in Germany MeinVZ [2] was the dominant social network until people started moving to Facebook and now MeinVZ is just a ghost town. And it pretty much feels the same with Facebook now, actually already for the last five or so years, people come back and engage more and more infrequently until they eventually disappear. It is much slower as compared to MeinVZ but I am pretty sure it is essentially the same thing. I am not sure where they are all going, maybe Instagram for the younger generation, maybe just WhatsApp for friends in my age, so Facebook the company might just be fine for some more time even if Facebook the network dies. But things have certainly changed from this madness of, I don't know, somewhere between five and ten years ago, when Facebook became inevitable, when it was constantly in thew news, when every ad poster featured a Facebook link. I would neither be surprised if it turned out that Facebook was an essentially quite short-lived onetime phenomenon and people were not that interested in a global community as the social media proponents would want you to believe, nor would I be surprised if every generation had its own Facebook even if just to set themselves apart from the older generation. Why would we even assume that social media is more than a fluke and does not die away just like many things before? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeinVZ https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeinVZ
- irishsultan 9y ago
  > I would be happy to pay this amount of money if it would ensure that Facebook would not try to do an nasty things with my data. Only if enough of your friends were on it to make it worthwhile, the danger is that many of your contacts would disappear, which would lessen the value of facebook for even more people, leading to a vicious cycle. And even if it didn't happen to your social circle it would stem the inflow of young people even more than is already the case).
coldtea 9y ago
>Obviously only my personal intuition but I'd wager there's not much of a business in a pay-to-play social network. Then it's not much of a business, period. In my ideal world, we'd only have businesses where the costs are open and direct (e.g. no "user is the product" or selling of personal data, or even "ad-based"). If they can't make it in this way, then, sorry, they don't have a business model.
- kwhitefoot 9y ago
  We would never have newspapers in that case. Very few have ever been able to support themselves on the price the user pays.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >We would never have newspapers in that case. Very few have ever been able to support themselves on the price the user pays. Well, if there are no buyers, then why have a product?
    - warkdarrior 9y ago
      Because some products' value is not understood until after acquisition. Investigative reporting is in that category.