

Facebook Premium - 1337biz
https://medium.com/the-biz-stone-collection/47715441d0be

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jmduke
I was incredibly surprised to see that Biz Stone (co-founder of Twitter) wrote
this, because it's not just a bad suggestion but it's a bad suggestion without
any real depth or analysis.

The hopeful side of me is saying it's an inside joke, because suggesting that
someone models a company after Pandora seems like it could only be done in
jest; if anything, I think Pandora is an example of how to succeed in
technology and fail in commerce.

The cynical side of me is saying that this is linkbait with the purpose to
generate clickthrough to Biz's startup, Jelly.

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ChuckMcM
Holy flashback! I was sitting in Sun trying to explain why the next version of
NFS could not be a 'pay' version to SunSoft leadership, and then President Ed
Zander said "Chuck, look how many people use NFS, if we got $10 for only 10%
of the seats out there we'd fund this company on that." To which I replied,
"If you charge $10 then 10% of the seats will be 0 since there will be no
seats."

This is the paradox of "infrastructure" services. Today the telephone is an
amazing thing. But their value is tied up in the network effect (other people
have them so you can use them to call). If nobody has a phone, you buying one
has little value, if everyone has a phone then you want one because you can
talk to everyone you know.

So Facebook is 'cool' when everyone you know has a presence there, it is 'not
cool' when you don't know anyone there. Charging a subscription now, is not
plausible, people will leave. Instead you need to sell entire groups and then
charge _them_ a subscription fee. Fortunately we have a really great example
of someone doing exactly that, it was called Yammer. Put everyone in your
business on Yammer (it felt like they just changed the CSS assets in the
Facebook code, seriously) and increase connectivity and communication in your
team. Instant value proposition if everyone in the company is using it. So you
sell a subscription to the company and boom, done.

Now if you wanted to create Facebook for Enterprise to compete with Yammer,
that might be interesting, and to bake in the notion of "Enterprise" presence
and "Non Business" presence into the same user account, that would generate
revenue. And if you told people, "if your company signs up for Facebook for
Enterprises you're personal account will also be ad free and have these
additional features ...." then you can create 'pull' where people actually
want to lobby for it inside.

But just doing a subscription model probably won't work.

~~~
md224
> Charging a subscription now, is not plausible, people will leave.

From the article:

> For $10 a month, people who really love Facebook (and can afford it), could
> see no ads. Maybe some special features too.

Biz isn't suggesting a paywall here; he's suggesting a freemium model. I'm not
sure people would leave if Facebook merely announced that people could pay
$10/month for extra features _if they felt like it_.

Of course, I have my own concerns about ad-free premium services... it creates
a socio-economic divide between those who can afford to avoid advertisements
and those who cannot. Not the end of the world, but it gives me pause.

------
ChikkaChiChi
The TL;DR: "I bet if Facebook got 10% of the subscribers to pay 10 bucks a
month for something, they could make a billion in revenue."

The reason why social media bubble exists is that they call people who use the
service "subscribers" These people did not outlay anything they would consider
meaningful to enter into said "subscription" contract.

Don't assume seeing mom's pictures of your family's cat somehow assumes people
are willing to pay for the service.

source for anecdote: app.net.

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StavrosK
Ah, the old "if even <some low number> of people pay for it, we're golden!"
thing.

I'm going to go sell rocks at a concert for $1m a pop. The concert is 100,000
people, if even 0.01% pays for them, I'm rich!

~~~
guiomie
Talk about a great analogy. Selling rocks vs a Subscription model to the
biggest social network on the planet.

~~~
StavrosK
The size of the company doesn't change the fact that there are numbers smaller
than 10%, 1% or even 0.1%.

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garduque
Ads don't bother me that much, really. Between AdBlock and general
desensitization to them, they're pretty easy to ignore.

But how much can I pay to never see another update about one of my friends
playing any kind of game or app or quiz; to automatically reject and hide any
invites to any game or app or quiz; to never get an Event invite ever again,
and to never see Upcoming Events in my sidebar; to never see another friend
suggestion or Pages You Might Like or Games You Might Like or Music Pages You
Might Like; to make my newsfeed show me everything from everyone I choose to
view there, in chronological order always, not just what the Computer In The
Sky thinks I want to see when I want to see it; to make it stop asking me to
dig through my contacts for more friend suggestions?

And if all of those things are possible now, how much can I pay for a simple
one-page settings page so I can actually make it happen?

Maybe not $120/yr, but if there were definite improvements to my user
experience above and beyond just taking out ads, I'd think about it.

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davycro
Someone willing to pay $10 a month to hide ads probably uses AdBlock.

~~~
outside1234
exactly. and it works across sites, not just on facebook.

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jwheeler79
This is a common error in human misjudgement that just because you had one
relevant idea in the past it automatically follows future ideas should be so
relevant. But, they're not, and 10% of the people are not going to pay for no
ads.

~~~
jdrenterprises
"...and 10% of the people are not going to pay for no ads."

Any data to base this assumption on?

Maybe it won't be 10%... but even 1%, 4%, 6% are a solid revenue stream with a
user base the size of Facebook's.

~~~
jwheeler79
I don't need hard data. To me it's common sense. Rare is the company making
$12B per annum. For example, The Coca-Cola Company made $9B in 2012. Even
rarer is an established company with a single idea that suddenly takes them to
that level of prosperity. I'd say so rare as to be nonexistent.

However, it's very common for already successful people to think all their
ideas are good. Wouldn't you be biased towards your own greatness if you were
named 2009 Nerd of the Year by GQ magazine, one of the Most Influential People
in The World by TIME, etc?

When you've been told by the world that you're brilliant, it's easy to be
seduced by that then go on further to make a horse's ass out of yourself.

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rastapanda
I think if implemented there would a massive conflict of interest because
those paying for Facebook premium are going to be the individuals advertisers
are targeting most, especially if it's $10 per month. It's essentially saying
lets remove all the people with disposable income out of the eye of the
advertisers. To me this seems like biting the hand that feeds.

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samirahmed
Honestly, the idea of a facebook subscription is not a new idea, nor is it a
feasible idea. It is something people have discussed on HN about for years
now. Not to mention $10 a month is unrealistic in every developing country
where roughly 40% of facebooks users are based (brazil, india, indonesia ...)

~~~
klawed
I would look more to LinkedIn Premium or OKC which lets paying users see more
about those in their network (like who's visiting their profile).

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xpose2000
I'm shocked Biz Stone made this blog post. His solution is basically to "lose
the ads and maybe some special features too" for 10 bucks a month. There is no
way that is good enough.

Perhaps what he is really getting at is that Facebook should consider some
type of Reddit Gold feature? Where users gain access to beta features first
and various perks.

Now that, would be interesting.

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omonra
This article is the ultimate proof that ANY Medium link is garbage.

I'm glad Tolstoy is not around anymore and is not able to post on Medium as it
would surely turn out to be bad.

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tocomment
Unrelated but why hasn't Facebook ever tried to become a payments platform?
They certainly have enough users and I'm guessing they'd make a ton of money.

~~~
mmanfrin
I've always thought this would be their golden goose. It would serve two main
purposes: give them a source of revenue (processing fees for their 'Pay with
Facebook' button, and additionally get people to save their credit card with
FB, converting to a lot more FB credits for games.

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eCa
> he needs to use [Facebook] to communicate with his new co-workers

Who uses Facebook for internal company communication?

~~~
pushtheenvelope
Actually, Facebook (the company) does a remarkable amount of internal company
communication using it.

~~~
pestaa
Eating their own dogfood? No, I don't think so.

[http://phabricator.org/](http://phabricator.org/)

~~~
strager
I work at Facebook. We use Facebook groups heavily for company announcements,
discussions, funny posts, help and support, feedback and feedback requests,
etc. We use Phabricator for code reviews and other software engineering tasks.

Of course, not everyone uses Phabricator (because not everyone is an engineer
or programmer), but I haven't seen anyone not use Facebook. Even the culinary
team (for Facebook's cafes) has a few popular Facebook groups.

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epa
I cant believe that this was an article posted by such a successful
entrepreneur. This is the type of amateur idea and discussion you would expect
from a grade 10 student. He has lost all credibility due to him actually
saying (and believes) that 10% of users would pay for this feature.

~~~
ams6110
I've heard this basic idea from all kinds of really successful businesspeople.
This idea that there's some minimal level of buy-in (10%, or whatever) that
you can just take for granted. It comes up most often when someone is
challenging the premise of their idea. "Well if we only get X% it'll still be
a win" etc.

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fatemayasmine
Wouldn't the same analysis apply to Twitter? Why don't they have a premium
service.

~~~
ihuman
It sounds like he thinks Twitter's ads cause engagement, and therefor you
don't need to hide them.

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exacube
The way I see it, Facebook manages and displays all the content you and your
friends provide, so it is nothing without the content providers. There is
something really odd about paying for a service so you can look at what your
friends' content.. it's an upsetting idea. Sure, a paid subscription is
totally optional, but it will still make me (and probably tons of others)
queasy to see Facebook asking you to pay if you want to use it better.

------
ams6110
I don't think you'd get 10% uptake on paying for an ad-free experience on a
site like Facebook which is mostly teenagers with no money of their own.

~~~
simonw
Facebook is used by about one sixth of the world's population. I don't think
the site is mostly teenagers any more.

~~~
btilly
_citation needed_ (on one sixth of the world's population)

Before you trot out their subscription numbers, I should point out that I know
quite a few people who have multiple FB accounts for a variety of reasons.
That portion goes up substantially when you add people who deliberately got
rid of accounts and then created new ones.

~~~
da02
What are some of those reasons? Most people I know can barely handle 1
account.

~~~
btilly
Here are a few use cases. For every one of them, I know at least one person
(sometimes many) who falls into that use case.

Guilds in online games often use FB groups to coordinate. If you want to spy
on other guilds, you'll need a different FB account. I've known people with
dozens.

People create and abandon accounts. When they later decide that they want to
use FB after all, it can be easier to create a new account than remember how
to get into the old one.

People often want to hide part of their lives from others. For instance a pre-
op transgender person might be part of transgender groups but have family who
they have not discussed their plans with. Having multiple FB accounts is a way
to separate these parts of their life.

People create accounts to use as sock puppets for online arguments.

~~~
da02
Damn... the people in your life are very interesting, clever, and busy. I
would have never guess most of those reasons. The people in your life sound
like fun... and occasionally combative ;)

~~~
btilly
You have no idea.

That said, I also think that people open up to me a surprising amount because
I'm willing to talk and listen. You never know what stories you'll hear.

For example after 9/11 I had some interesting conversations with a woman who
had been a minor princess there before the Russian invasion. She was the
janitor who cleaned up the office I worked at at night. I believe that I was
the only person in my company who was aware of her personal history.

Stop and think about that. I bet that you've seen a lot of people with
interesting histories that you know nothing about.

~~~
da02
I heard about that. I thought they died out years ago. I did not realize they
are still alive.

It might also be your demeanor. People seem to know who to trust through the
little things. Do you act differently than most of the guys you're around
with? Less judgmental, more ears than mouth? People confided in personal
stories, but nothing close to the 9/11 janitor staff. Ever heard of ABM?

~~~
btilly
Looking back at what I said, I suspect possible confusion.

She was a minor princess in Afghanistan back in the 1970s. Not a Russian one.
Having a princess from then still alive was not surprising. Realizing that I
was talking to one, was.

On me, I am friendly and outgoing to a fault. I'll talk to anyone about
anything. I get to know people who others wouldn't think of talking to. People
generally don't share their darkest secrets with me. But they will share odd
stories.

~~~
da02
Oh, I see now. Thanks for clearing that up.

Thanks again for sharing this. It's been fun.

------
vinceguidry
Sounds like an awful idea that might get you short-term revenue, but kill your
long-term strategy. You'd be cannibalizing your most profitable advertising
asset, asking for money from the people who least want to give it to you
(Facebook users) and spurning it from the people who have more of it and are
much more interested in giving it to you. (advertisers)

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guiomie
I dont know why everyone is lamenting its the worst idea ever.

Personally, I wouldn't pay 10$, but 5$ I would. No ads, with an extra feature,
such as, voice to phone number communication.

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austinheap
This has to be from KTVU.

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onedev
No, this is a pretty bad idea and takes away focus from Facebook's advertising
business which in the long term is far more lucrative and has far more
potential.

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slaven
Might work, but I bet the actual numbers might be closer to 1% paying $10 a
YEAR, which even at that scale diminishes the returns.

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scoyote
Shut up and take my money!

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unknownian
Why should we pay for a commodity like basic communication? The only payment
they may deserve is hosting my files and posts. I should be able to set up my
own server like email or XMPP. Traditional social networking paradigms are
bullshit. I hope identi.ca or Tent succeed.

~~~
octo_t
computer scientist in not getting social interactions shocker.

~~~
unknownian
Thank you for the compliment.

