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Until the day the general population actually pays for online services(this will never happen), Facebook like enterprises will exist. I know you'll respond and

Until the day the general population actually pays for online services(this will never happen), Facebook like enterprises will exist. I know you'll respond and tell me that you'd pay, but the vast majority of people will not, and that's why any type of paid social network will fail. They require mass adoption to be successful.

vixen99 9y ago
Maybe one day the difficulties of establishing a nano/micro payment system will be overcome. https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/2010-11/MicropaymentsAndTheNet/issues.html https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/2010-...
- DSingularity 9y ago
  Thanks for the link. Regarding mental transaction costs, why not make refunds one-click-away? If after consuming the digital good or using the service a user feels “oh my this wasn’t worth it”, it takes one click to undo his usage. Wouldn’t that eliminate this cost by relaxing the user?
  - freeone3000 9y ago
    It'd hamper adoption by vendors. If I knew your could refund whenever, how do I know when it's safe to take out that money?
    - DSingularity 9y ago
      My guess is you model it and exploit how over time everything normalizes. Bottom line is that 99.9% of users won’t request refunds. And for those that do, well they are micro transactions right?
  - always_good 9y ago
    Actually, infinite refunds / charge-backs are responsible for major friction in our existing systems. Those mechanisms are expensive and add a cost to every dollar sent through them. Really, microtransactions should be final by default unless you specifically need the machinery of escrow or clearing delay.
ufo 9y ago
Im not sure facebook would do the right thing if users paid for it. I suspect they would just keep on doing their data harvesting to increment their revenue. For example, in the early days of cable TV it had very few ads but nowadays it is infested with ads and product placement. I feel the only way out here is legislation.
- overcast 9y ago
  Honestly, I don't believe any company would "do the right thing". Companies exist to make money, as much as they possibly can. They might start off with good intentions, but inevitably, they will start looking for alternate ways of revenue. Sure, maybe some not for profit, good intention, fairly tale business might pop up. But they will in NO way get to billions of users, and will be dwarfed by the free alternatives.
  - ASalazarMX 9y ago
    > Honestly, I don't believe any company would "do the right thing". Companies exist to make money, as much as they possibly can. Don't forget that companies are a tool for people to make money, It they lack ethics it's because a) the people who run them lack ethics, or b) they are too removed from the operation it only means a quarterly stream of money. I think granting legal personhood to conceptual entities was one of the biggest mistakes of capitalism.
    - ethbro 9y ago
      Sometimes it simply means it's the globally winning move. Two hypotheticals. 1) Users pay Facebook a monthly fee to use the platform (enough to fund it profitably, so say $25/month) 2) Users pay Facebook a monthly fee AND Facebook markets their information (if not through direct advertising, then other methods) If the fee is the same, and there's no fundamental reason it shouldn't be, Facebook is under a fiduciary duty to always choose (2). The only path to not monetizing users is Apple-esque "Make so much money you can forgo profit in service to branding that the market forgives you". And I don't see Facebook ever commanding those kinds of margins. Absolutely agreed on corporate personhood. Teddy Roosevelt's biography and the 1850 - 1920 period is instructive, as you see what it really takes to claw back control from corporations (aka "combinations" at the time).
stevenicr 9y ago
"actually pays for online services(this will never happen)" - I used to think this with several things, and that thinking was changed a few times. Perhaps people paying for it is not "$10 per month" or ".01c per article". People could pay for their own controlled social network by sharing a slice of memory on their computer / phone / router and allowing access to their internet bandwidth for friends / family / friends of friends, and pay for something like scuttle / ipfs without setting up recurring cash loss through their bank card right? As they learn they are paying with loss of privacy, loss of control, and other costs - how they choose to pay may change in ways beyond current thinking.
- jonnydubowsky 9y ago
  That's a beautiful expression of a possible shift to the underlying economics model of social media sites, and one I would contribute energy and commits (and hard drive space) to.

vixen99 9y ago

Maybe one day the difficulties of establishing a nano/micro payment system will be overcome. https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/2010-11/MicropaymentsAndTheNet/issues.html https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/2010-...

DSingularity 9y ago
Thanks for the link. Regarding mental transaction costs, why not make refunds one-click-away? If after consuming the digital good or using the service a user feels “oh my this wasn’t worth it”, it takes one click to undo his usage. Wouldn’t that eliminate this cost by relaxing the user?
- freeone3000 9y ago
  It'd hamper adoption by vendors. If I knew your could refund whenever, how do I know when it's safe to take out that money?
  - DSingularity 9y ago
    My guess is you model it and exploit how over time everything normalizes. Bottom line is that 99.9% of users won’t request refunds. And for those that do, well they are micro transactions right?
- always_good 9y ago
  Actually, infinite refunds / charge-backs are responsible for major friction in our existing systems. Those mechanisms are expensive and add a cost to every dollar sent through them. Really, microtransactions should be final by default unless you specifically need the machinery of escrow or clearing delay.

ufo 9y ago

Im not sure facebook would do the right thing if users paid for it. I suspect they would just keep on doing their data harvesting to increment their revenue. For example, in the early days of cable TV it had very few ads but nowadays it is infested with ads and product placement. I feel the only way out here is legislation.

overcast 9y ago
Honestly, I don't believe any company would "do the right thing". Companies exist to make money, as much as they possibly can. They might start off with good intentions, but inevitably, they will start looking for alternate ways of revenue. Sure, maybe some not for profit, good intention, fairly tale business might pop up. But they will in NO way get to billions of users, and will be dwarfed by the free alternatives.
- ASalazarMX 9y ago
  > Honestly, I don't believe any company would "do the right thing". Companies exist to make money, as much as they possibly can. Don't forget that companies are a tool for people to make money, It they lack ethics it's because a) the people who run them lack ethics, or b) they are too removed from the operation it only means a quarterly stream of money. I think granting legal personhood to conceptual entities was one of the biggest mistakes of capitalism.
  - ethbro 9y ago
    Sometimes it simply means it's the globally winning move. Two hypotheticals. 1) Users pay Facebook a monthly fee to use the platform (enough to fund it profitably, so say $25/month) 2) Users pay Facebook a monthly fee AND Facebook markets their information (if not through direct advertising, then other methods) If the fee is the same, and there's no fundamental reason it shouldn't be, Facebook is under a fiduciary duty to always choose (2). The only path to not monetizing users is Apple-esque "Make so much money you can forgo profit in service to branding that the market forgives you". And I don't see Facebook ever commanding those kinds of margins. Absolutely agreed on corporate personhood. Teddy Roosevelt's biography and the 1850 - 1920 period is instructive, as you see what it really takes to claw back control from corporations (aka "combinations" at the time).

stevenicr 9y ago

"actually pays for online services(this will never happen)" - I used to think this with several things, and that thinking was changed a few times. Perhaps people paying for it is not "$10 per month" or ".01c per article". People could pay for their own controlled social network by sharing a slice of memory on their computer / phone / router and allowing access to their internet bandwidth for friends / family / friends of friends, and pay for something like scuttle / ipfs without setting up recurring cash loss through their bank card right? As they learn they are paying with loss of privacy, loss of control, and other costs - how they choose to pay may change in ways beyond current thinking.

jonnydubowsky 9y ago
That's a beautiful expression of a possible shift to the underlying economics model of social media sites, and one I would contribute energy and commits (and hard drive space) to.