
A radical business plan for Facebook: Charge people. - atestu
http://www.slate.com/id/2203436/pagenum/all/#p2
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jmtulloss
I disagree with this. Social networks have value because of the people, not
the product itself. The social networking aspect (ie, finding friends and
communicating with them) has to be free.

The key is to create products that leverage this network but have their own
distinct value. Then, charge for those.

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viae
I agree with your assessment of the value, but disagree with your conjecture
of the solution. It'll take too long to create products that leverage the
network and are profitable.

A better short term solution is to sell the data on the user base to mailing
houses and other companies that are looking to find more information on their
customers. Example target customers are political campaigns, nonprofits,
associations, and magazines looking for new subscribers. This is an old
fashioned business that has been around for years. It's proven, it works.

FB is headed this way with Connect, but Connect is too muddied, unproven, and
relies too much on cooperation with 3rd parties.

A second set of customers, which in retrospect may be what you are referring
to, are universities. The alumni network websites of schools are inactive
wastelands. Facebook should be marketing walled garden solutions to
Universities. Why build your own network from scratch (or expensive off-the-
shelf vendor software) when you can just subscribe to a service from Facebook
that will instantly give a University access to a huge percentage of their
self-identified alumn...

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mattmaroon
It's radical because almost nobody would want to pay with so many free
networks around, and most of the people are foreigners and couldn't afford to
anyway.

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johns
Foreigners don't have money? I missed your point there.

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jfarmer
It goes like this:

Say Facebook charged US $1/month/user.

$1 is more for someone living in Argentina than in the US, and less for
someone living in Europe. That seems bad -- you want to get people to pay what
they're willing, and no less (price discrimination). Europeans would pay more,
Argentines less, in USD.

Now, say you charge local prices. What's to stop someone from the US changing
their network to Zimbabwe or whatever?

Once you start charging you start distorting how your users behave. Since
Facebook rests on network effects any small change in user behavior has a huge
impact across the network.

I think getting users to pay Facebook directly makes sense, but they have to
be careful about it.

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pkaler
Facebook should compete with TicketMaster. Allow Admins to sell tickets to
Events and charge a service fee.

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vaksel
I'd probably just make it premium for people with 100 friends or more.
$10/month or something. Won't affect most casual users, but will affect the
more hardcore users who are so addicted they'll pay

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mattmaroon
I bet most of them wouldn't. For one, what is Facebook going to do about the
ones who already have 200 friends but don't pay? Force them to un-friend 100?

For another, what percentage of people actually have that many? It seems high
to me because I'm one of them, but probably there are, in their user numbers,
masses of people who have a handful or none at all.

I know I personally would just find the best free social net. I only use
Facebook for playing a couple games anyway.

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teej
"I only use Facebook for playing a couple games anyway."

May I ask which? I've been involved with some of the bigger games on Facebook,
so I'm curious to know what's got you hooked.

