

What if Facebook charged $1/year : Would you still use it? - codegeek

FB has been a great execution of an idea overall even though I am not a big fan of it lately due to every changing things with it. Anyway, looking at the recent issues with fb and its dismal projections, what happens if it asks its users to donate/pay $1 for a whole year ? Is this something that active users will consider ? Personally, I don't use fb at all these days but out of the 900 million claimed active users, even if 500 million pay, wouldn't that mean 500 million in revenue for the year ? Is that pocket change ? Would that help ?
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onlyup
At this point, yes I would. I bet anyone who has hundreds of pictures up would
too (so a lot of the female user base). Some people wouldn't mind but I could
see some being annoyed but paying it anyway. I think it could lead to people
not joining and would probably be the beginning of the end for the company. I
mean it would still take in a lot of money for the foreseeable future but
would ultimately fail.

If Facebook were to charge when they were smaller, it would have stopped
growth and allowed a competitor to take most of their user base. I would not
have paid anything when I first started using the service.

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cdolan92
Not a chance. I think I'm one of the decently large group of Facebook users
who are looking for any excuse to stop using the service.

Not only do I think its a poor way of sharing information, its always had huge
swings of spam-ridden News Feeds, and forced user adoptions in terms of UI,
etc.

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alanfang
No because only 1/10 of my friends that use it now would continue using it.

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lsc
Not for Facebook, no. I won't take it for free. However, I think that maybe
you have a germ of an idea.

The thing is, what is important about a social network? the other people on
the network. If you had a quality filter on that network, sure, I'd pay a
buck.

Some people would even argue that the buck /is/ a quality filter... to some
extent, it is, if you use that dollar to verify the identity of the user in
question. (I mean, this is important more on professional networks, like
linkedin) but yeah, in some contexts? that'd be great.

but, if you mean "can facebook make money from charging people a buck a year?"
my guess is "probably not." - it would have to be a niche network.

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andrewhillman
I think FB should charge for the mobile app since more than half of users are
visiting via mobile. Since FB can't make money off mobile users why not change
$3 per month to use the mobile app? If FB started to charge mobile users it
would change the dynamics of free mobile apps. If users don't want to pay,
then they will need to use the FB website.

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itsprofitbaron
"Since FB can't make money off mobile users"

Facebook is making $183 Million per year off mobile ads whilst, this may not
be a huge number when considering Facebook's user numbers, the amount of users
who use Facebook on their phone or even the amount of users who only use
Facebook through their phone this number is certainly going to grow
considerably over the next few years.

In fact, Facebook haven't even rolled out these advertisements worldwide yet
and the ones they are testing are only showing every 150 or so, again this is
something Facebook aren't being aggressive about their CFO David Ebersman said
Facebook are "being very careful about the volume of sponsored stories in the
news feed because it’s so core to the user experience."

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stewie2
No I won't use it. It's not very useful. Following others doesn't make me
happy. If google charges $1/year, I will stay.

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aleprok
Hell no. I wont pay to them when they already have pretty much all my data.

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alxjrvs
Methinks they have that data to cultivate ads for the users. If they asked you
to pay and changed their policies for the paying (ability to export data, a
lack of emphasis of keeping it for themselves) would it be more compelling?

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c1sc0
yes, if that 1$ (hell, make it $10) buys me privacy & if they cut the ads

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PonyGumbo
You could always try Adblock. I've never seen an ad on Facebook.

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jnadeau
I've noticed that parts of ads(text) have been trickling through lately with
Adblock, maybe I just need an update.

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lewisgodowski
Same here. Luckily I don't spend a lot of time on Facebook, and a little bit
of text on the side is a lot easier to ignore than a bunch of pictures.

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helen842000
Yes, if it meant that it was ad free for me.

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mtgx
I'm not even using it right now. And if Facebook made it easier to delete the
account, I would've done it by now, but I can't be bothered to look for
tutorials on how to delete your Facebook account right now.

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Andrenid
Why do you need tutorials?

You just go to <https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account>

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baritalia
No. Speaking for me personally, times of procrastinating because of Facebook
are long gone. After some time, you realise there are clearly no benefits.
Hell, I'll say it, I think Facebook has reached its peak already (maybe not in
number of users) but definitely in other areas. There are healthier
alternatives to almost every service at Facebook.

And as somebody else mentioned, if Google wanted to charge $1/yr for all their
services, I'd be glad to pay it. Same goes for iCloud and other Apple related
services.

