Why Facebook will never charge you to use their site…
April 4, 2010
Facebook will never start charging it’s users to use it’s site. Why? Firstly, it would drive 90% of it’s users away from it’s site. That’s just stupid. It would be like me putting up a pay wall on this site. The only benefit of it would be that even fewer people will visit it. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t pay to use Facebook. If Facebook started charging, I would just find another social network to join, or, heaven forbid, just not be a part of an online social network.
Secondly, Facebook doesn’t need to charge it’s users to get money. Do the people spreading these rumours even know how Facebook’s revenue model works? Facebook isn’t just some profitless entity, letting users use it’s site while driving it’s owners into bankruptcy. They make their money by selling adverts, just like Google and almost every other popular website online. If they have no customers, there will be no-one to sell adverts to.
These rumours are exactly the same as all those rumours years ago that Hotmail/MSN/AIM/Myspace/Bebo/[insert popular 'free-for-end-users' website here] was going to start charging. How many of these services started charging? You’re right; none. The people who start these rumours are just fear-mongerers who are just trying to seek attention, sell you something, or both. And the people who believe it are the people who don’t understand how Facebook can be free, and thus believe that they would start charging. Well, Facebook isn’t ‘free’, it’s just given to you at a, well, discount. You don’t have to pay any money, but your data is used to provide you adverts for things that you will then -in theory- go on to buy. When you click those ads, Facebook/Google/Myspace/etc. gets money for having the adverts there. It’s the same with TV channels. ITV is free because they put advert breaks in between your programmes. The BBC isn’t free because you pay the TV license fee, but at the same time you don’t get adverts.
So, to put it bluntly, Facebook will never charge you to use their site. And if they do, then just join another social network that doesn’t charge you. Simple.
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Whist you do have a good point here, if Facebook is as popular as everyone makes out (and I do believe it is), then around 60% would pay for at least 6 months, if not more, out of the 12 in a year. If you do the maths, that would work out to just under the advertising costs.
They probably won’t, as you said. However, it’s more of a possibility than everyone thinks.
I agree. I do think that a lot of people WOULD pay. I probably would pay for a month, or buy an iPhone app or something (I bought a Twitter app, after all), but I don’t see myself buying a subscription to a social network, which will just be redundant in a few years. I mean, I wouldn’t even buy a subscription to a news outlet! But for a company with shareholders and investors like Facebook, a move that risky would be very unwise, especially when the current model is proving to be the better of them all (Lots of customers, no expense for them and lots of profit for the company); it’s how Google became so rich, after all.