
An Open Letter To Mark Zuckerberg: “Don’t Do A Mugabe To Facebook” - OoTheNigerian
http://oonwoye.com/blog/2010/05/18/facebook-letter/
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silkodyssey
I am not sure selling privacy is such a great idea. People tend to see privacy
as more of a right then a privilege and facebook's actions of late has been
viewed as a violation of these rights. To ask users to pay to keep their
content private would probably make matters worse and send facebook on a
similar path to the one mugabe took zimbabwe on.

I think the premium services model is an interesting one however. This could
provide an additional revenue source for facebook but I think it raises an
interesting question. Are the users of facebook more valuable to the company
as customers or as products. Or in other words, is there more money to be made
in advertising than in premium services?

With all the brain power and talent of the people at facebook it's likely that
these ideas and more have already been considered and in the initiatives that
the company has taken recently shows which model they prefer.

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OoTheNigerian
I agree it will be risky to change privacy now, but inconsistency is really
bad. That should chose a way and stick to it.

I doubt that the revenue per user is up to $10/year. That will be $4bn every
year. So even if they get only 10 million paying, it will be a better return
per user.

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silkodyssey
Theres no doubt that it would be a profitable venture but Facebook is
concerned about more than just profit and at the moment. I get the impression
that revenue is not their primary concern or least they aren't focused on
maximizing revenue at the moment. Instead they're tweaking their product and
growing the userbase to try to position themselves to maximize revenues later
and become a force in the business world to compete with the likes of Google,
Apple, Microsoft etc.

