4 ms·

I think that most people, if offered $17/year for Facebook, would quit. I don't think the value to the user is that great. That's not a problem for the company

by AlanSE 7y ago

I think that most people, if offered $17/year for Facebook, would quit. I don't think the value to the user is that great. That's not a problem for the company as it exists today. It feels like a flawed assumption that users have a committed interest in sites where they share content. People have a passing interest, and different parts on their brain conflict. Their lizard brain might want cat gifs, while the planning part of their brain knows they should stop procrastinating and get to work. The planning part is the one who gets out the credit card. The last thing that Facebook or ANY content-oriented site is to deal with the responsible parent, as opposed to the distracted child. Having the parent make the decisions is better for us. Much of the internet depends on that never happening.

jazzyjackson 7y ago
I think doubting the value to the average user is a little uncreative -- a quick search tells me the average internet user in USA is paying $600 / year for internet access (sounds right to me, I pay $50/m for a fiber connection limited to 100mb/s, gigabit is $90/m) For a lot of people, facebook is basically the internet. It's their messenger, their photo album, their event calendar, and their community church group. Having the cost somehow bundled with bandwidth would make it seems a lot less significant a fee. Otherwise I agree, an internet where every community wants $5/m here and $5/m there is basically the multi-streaming-tv hell that people complain about.
- jerf 7y ago
  Facebook and Google are the monsters on the scene. Most sites make even less money. So the problem you get into isn't even the $5/month-too-many-places problem, it's the microtransaction problem, where broadly speaking the fixed costs of the transaction, both monetary and cognitive effort, exceed the value of the transaction. We haven't fixed that even in 2019, where transaction have gotten a lot cheaper than they were in 1995-ish. Hence, "alternate universe". I won't quite say it's an impossible alternate, but it sure isn't a likely one. Even if I could travel back in time with the power to mandate it in 1995, by 2000 someone would have had the bright idea of being advertising-based and it would have a very good chance of strangling the for-pay industry. Probably more interesting is the question of what's stable in 2030. There are steps governments could theoretically take to really turn the tide of things. One of my favorites is a 1-cent-per-impression advertising tax. I am well aware of how expensive that it relative to a normal ad impression today; it's part of the point. Let the really lucrative stuff like luxury goods and mesothelioma ads continue, but kill the massive surveillance industry sprung up to wring literally .001 cents per impression more out of you at the cost of creating 80% of a ready-made police state. I think the costs the advertising industry are externalizing on to us are hard to overstate; I would quite literally and with full knowledge of what I am saying put them as on par with environmental externalities.
  - AlanSE 7y ago
    This is an enlightening comment. I have always been intrigued by the idea of micro transactions. In a modern formulation, duplicate Reddit, but replace upvotes with 0.001 cents donations (to who? I don't care). If you hold shift and click the up arrow, it'll do 0.01. Hold control shift and click for 0.1 cents. Then have larger options you can drill into. People would throw around a lot of mili-cents. But at some point, "whales" would be sure to emerge as well. I have no idea why this isn't happening, thus I must assume there are legal and financial barriers to implementing it.
dredmorbius 7y ago
The value prop likely varies greatly -- if you're making a living off being a "Facebook Influencer", or are running brand awareness through social, you'll be willing to pay a lot, possibly thousands, even millions, of dollars. For the long tail at the bottom, a few bucks is too much. And if you're just socialising with a small group, ultimately, the next available free-tier service, or Frank or Francine spinning up a Friendica node or Mailman instance is a viable alternative (or if not that than something else). Keep in mind that FB started as a small exclusive network (a few hundreds of Harvard undergrads), and grew largely through cache and aspirational appeal. (danah boyd has developed this idea at length.) Now, it has at best neutral appeal other than it's where everybody is, which, if they go somewhere else, it instantly loses. And sticking everyone with a high fee will do that. Also, the costs of revenue -- of simply billing for and collecting on services -- will almost certainly exceed all other costs of service, as will new-user recruitment. Which is why "free" keeps on winning (until it doesn't).

by AlanSE 7y ago

jazzyjackson 7y ago

I think doubting the value to the average user is a little uncreative -- a quick search tells me the average internet user in USA is paying $600 / year for internet access (sounds right to me, I pay $50/m for a fiber connection limited to 100mb/s, gigabit is $90/m) For a lot of people, facebook is basically the internet. It's their messenger, their photo album, their event calendar, and their community church group. Having the cost somehow bundled with bandwidth would make it seems a lot less significant a fee. Otherwise I agree, an internet where every community wants $5/m here and $5/m there is basically the multi-streaming-tv hell that people complain about.

jerf 7y ago
Facebook and Google are the monsters on the scene. Most sites make even less money. So the problem you get into isn't even the $5/month-too-many-places problem, it's the microtransaction problem, where broadly speaking the fixed costs of the transaction, both monetary and cognitive effort, exceed the value of the transaction. We haven't fixed that even in 2019, where transaction have gotten a lot cheaper than they were in 1995-ish. Hence, "alternate universe". I won't quite say it's an impossible alternate, but it sure isn't a likely one. Even if I could travel back in time with the power to mandate it in 1995, by 2000 someone would have had the bright idea of being advertising-based and it would have a very good chance of strangling the for-pay industry. Probably more interesting is the question of what's stable in 2030. There are steps governments could theoretically take to really turn the tide of things. One of my favorites is a 1-cent-per-impression advertising tax. I am well aware of how expensive that it relative to a normal ad impression today; it's part of the point. Let the really lucrative stuff like luxury goods and mesothelioma ads continue, but kill the massive surveillance industry sprung up to wring literally .001 cents per impression more out of you at the cost of creating 80% of a ready-made police state. I think the costs the advertising industry are externalizing on to us are hard to overstate; I would quite literally and with full knowledge of what I am saying put them as on par with environmental externalities.
- AlanSE 7y ago
  This is an enlightening comment. I have always been intrigued by the idea of micro transactions. In a modern formulation, duplicate Reddit, but replace upvotes with 0.001 cents donations (to who? I don't care). If you hold shift and click the up arrow, it'll do 0.01. Hold control shift and click for 0.1 cents. Then have larger options you can drill into. People would throw around a lot of mili-cents. But at some point, "whales" would be sure to emerge as well. I have no idea why this isn't happening, thus I must assume there are legal and financial barriers to implementing it.

dredmorbius 7y ago

The value prop likely varies greatly -- if you're making a living off being a "Facebook Influencer", or are running brand awareness through social, you'll be willing to pay a lot, possibly thousands, even millions, of dollars. For the long tail at the bottom, a few bucks is too much. And if you're just socialising with a small group, ultimately, the next available free-tier service, or Frank or Francine spinning up a Friendica node or Mailman instance is a viable alternative (or if not that than something else). Keep in mind that FB started as a small exclusive network (a few hundreds of Harvard undergrads), and grew largely through cache and aspirational appeal. (danah boyd has developed this idea at length.) Now, it has at best neutral appeal other than it's where everybody is, which, if they go somewhere else, it instantly loses. And sticking everyone with a high fee will do that. Also, the costs of revenue -- of simply billing for and collecting on services -- will almost certainly exceed all other costs of service, as will new-user recruitment. Which is why "free" keeps on winning (until it doesn't).