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Looking at their average revenue per user. Even with the break down into regions, US users (the most premium users according to the report) make $25/year. I wou

Looking at their average revenue per user. Even with the break down into regions, US users (the most premium users according to the report) make $25/year. I would easily pay $100/year for tracking free, advertising free Facebook.

m_ke 8y ago
Even if only 5% of your friends were on it?
- kornish 8y ago
  That's a leading question. It could (in theory) be possible to come up with a plan that tracks and advertises to free users while letting people pay to maintain some privacies.
  - bitexploder 8y ago
    This creates a two tiered society in the future. Kind of Dystopian feeling.
    - maneesh 8y ago
      what? That's just a freemium model.
    - tmalsburg2 8y ago
      This is a joke, right?
      - bitexploder 8y ago
        Heh, I guess I should have been more elaborate. It was half sarcastic, half philosophical. I was just imagining a future where resources/money only matter to purchase privacy and most essential needs are taken care of. Instead of rich poor, what if the future is those with privacy and those with out, or some shade of that? Maybe it will always be science fiction, but we live in an increasingly monitored world and that power could easily be turned on citizen.
  - joemag 8y ago
    It’s a great model for the users. The fact that it hasn’t seen significant adoption makes me think that it’s not viable one, though. If you think about it, advertisers would put much lesser value on the free tier users, so the free tier will collapse.
adventured 8y ago
You're looking at that wrong. That's $25 for just the quarter. They'll cross over $100 per user this year for the US & Canada. For Q4 it was $26.76 for that combined region, for example.
- nabla9 8y ago
  I don't think that's correct. They must report yearly revenue per user quarterly.
  - adventured 8y ago
    It is correct, they generated $26 per user in the US and Canada in Q417. There's 185m daily active users in the US and Canada, driving $20+ billion in sales for 2018. The US + Canada market generates 3x the revenue per user versus the EU, and 10x the per user revenue of Asia Pacific. Here's the Q4 reporting: "But most of Facebook's money still comes from users in the U.S. and Canada, where that number is even higher: $26.76 per user." https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/facebook-earnings-q4-2017-arpu.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/facebook-earnings-q4-2017-ar... And here's a break-out on the regionals for past Q4 reports: https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average-revenue-per-user-by-region/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average...
    - nabla9 8y ago
      That's almost 30 cents per day per user!
JTon 8y ago
Me too. I'm not sure if I could trust FB not to track though. I'd always feel like they would collect anyways, "anonymize", and build a profile for users who opt into the paid service. For "internal" use of course. In fewer words, I simply don't trust FB, and I'm not sure if there's a good system to audit their data collection behaviours.
joemag 8y ago
Law of averages... The distribution might be such that the kind of user willing and able to pay $100 a year for a social network is worth a lot more than $100 a year to advertisers. No matter how you slice it, the ad supported model might just be a better flywheel than subrsciption based one.
pkaye 8y ago
You are looking at the average. What if the ones willing to pay $100/year are those worth more than $100/year.
- bduerst 8y ago
  Yep. Just having the $100 disposable income for a social media site means you have disposable income for other things that advertisers would love to pay to show you.
fortylove 8y ago
I see people say things like this a lot on HN ("I would easily pay X for Y, if it meant no advertising"), and I worry that we are a bit of a self selecting population with the means for such things. Imagine you have family with 4 kids. Are you actually going to spend $600/year on facebook? Also, I wonder if the people who _wouldn't_ pay for a subscription are just quieter? And finally, would you really want to be on facebook if it lost half of its user base because that half didn't want to pay?
- rainbowmverse 8y ago
  It's the "I'd buy that on a t-shirt" problem. People who say it don't usually mean it, and the few who do aren't worth the trouble of making it available.

m_ke 8y ago

Even if only 5% of your friends were on it?

kornish 8y ago
That's a leading question. It could (in theory) be possible to come up with a plan that tracks and advertises to free users while letting people pay to maintain some privacies.
- bitexploder 8y ago
  This creates a two tiered society in the future. Kind of Dystopian feeling.
  - maneesh 8y ago
    what? That's just a freemium model.
  - tmalsburg2 8y ago
    This is a joke, right?
    - bitexploder 8y ago
      Heh, I guess I should have been more elaborate. It was half sarcastic, half philosophical. I was just imagining a future where resources/money only matter to purchase privacy and most essential needs are taken care of. Instead of rich poor, what if the future is those with privacy and those with out, or some shade of that? Maybe it will always be science fiction, but we live in an increasingly monitored world and that power could easily be turned on citizen.
- joemag 8y ago
  It’s a great model for the users. The fact that it hasn’t seen significant adoption makes me think that it’s not viable one, though. If you think about it, advertisers would put much lesser value on the free tier users, so the free tier will collapse.

adventured 8y ago

You're looking at that wrong. That's $25 for just the quarter. They'll cross over $100 per user this year for the US & Canada. For Q4 it was $26.76 for that combined region, for example.

nabla9 8y ago
I don't think that's correct. They must report yearly revenue per user quarterly.
- adventured 8y ago
  It is correct, they generated $26 per user in the US and Canada in Q417. There's 185m daily active users in the US and Canada, driving $20+ billion in sales for 2018. The US + Canada market generates 3x the revenue per user versus the EU, and 10x the per user revenue of Asia Pacific. Here's the Q4 reporting: "But most of Facebook's money still comes from users in the U.S. and Canada, where that number is even higher: $26.76 per user." https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/facebook-earnings-q4-2017-arpu.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/facebook-earnings-q4-2017-ar... And here's a break-out on the regionals for past Q4 reports: https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average-revenue-per-user-by-region/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average...
  - nabla9 8y ago
    That's almost 30 cents per day per user!

JTon 8y ago

Me too. I'm not sure if I could trust FB not to track though. I'd always feel like they would collect anyways, "anonymize", and build a profile for users who opt into the paid service. For "internal" use of course. In fewer words, I simply don't trust FB, and I'm not sure if there's a good system to audit their data collection behaviours.

joemag 8y ago

Law of averages... The distribution might be such that the kind of user willing and able to pay $100 a year for a social network is worth a lot more than $100 a year to advertisers. No matter how you slice it, the ad supported model might just be a better flywheel than subrsciption based one.

pkaye 8y ago

You are looking at the average. What if the ones willing to pay $100/year are those worth more than $100/year.

bduerst 8y ago
Yep. Just having the $100 disposable income for a social media site means you have disposable income for other things that advertisers would love to pay to show you.

fortylove 8y ago

I see people say things like this a lot on HN ("I would easily pay X for Y, if it meant no advertising"), and I worry that we are a bit of a self selecting population with the means for such things. Imagine you have family with 4 kids. Are you actually going to spend $600/year on facebook? Also, I wonder if the people who _wouldn't_ pay for a subscription are just quieter? And finally, would you really want to be on facebook if it lost half of its user base because that half didn't want to pay?

rainbowmverse 8y ago
It's the "I'd buy that on a t-shirt" problem. People who say it don't usually mean it, and the few who do aren't worth the trouble of making it available.