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Facebook & monthly fee?

Discussion in 'Non-Vegas Chat' started by Joe, May 24, 2012.

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  1. Joe

    Joe VIP Whale

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    I belong to a survey site and they do a daily poll. Since the Facebook IPO on Friday, I found today's poll question and the timing of it interesting.

    I have no idea how large the poll sample is, or who participated in the poll.

    BTW, I'm in the 67% block.:nono:

    [​IMG]
     
  2. Nevyn

    Nevyn VIP Whale

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    I'm not overly concerned. Sure, they'll research things like that, but the truth is the only unique thing about facebook is the size of its member footprint.

    Trying to charge members directly would be like a giant gift basket to G+
     
  3. raraavis

    raraavis VIP Whale

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    i agree with you joe! although it would make me sad to no longer be on facebook since that is the easiest and fastest way for me to communicate with friends and family (i don't live near anyone :cry:).
     
  4. Nevyn

    Nevyn VIP Whale

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    You probably wouldn't be that sad, as you'd sign up for an alternative free service that you might even prefer.
     
  5. Joe

    Joe VIP Whale

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    I'm on it mostly to see what my nieces and nephews are up to. Amazing the amount of personal information they can post and they aren't that young. 30s & 40s.
    I do use it to post political positions, since I can't do that here. :wink2:
     
  6. captainron62

    captainron62 VIP Whale

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    Everyone always assumes it is Facebook fishing with these kind of surveys. It is more likely that other entities that see a bit of a chink in the Facebook armor as of late are fishing to see if there is a market for a paid service. Likely a paid service would be void of all the silly games and senseless ads.
     
  7. DenvertoVegas

    DenvertoVegas Tourist

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    With the potential lawsuits coming up, maybe they are trying to find some revenue sources.
     
  8. raraavis

    raraavis VIP Whale

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    do you have suggestions? i've tried many different "social" sites, and i haven't found one as good as facebook yet. thanks.
     
  9. wigwam_salesman

    wigwam_salesman VIP Whale

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    If Facebook did start to charge then the others would suddenly look better :)

    It won't happen though.
     
  10. shifter

    shifter Degenerate Gambler

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    they'll never charge users. their millions of users are the entire reason for their multi-billion dollar value. however, what they may (and should) do someday is charge businesses. everybody knows that you have to be on FB/twitter/etc to stay in touch with your customers, so most any business would definitely pay a monthly fee.
     
  11. raraavis

    raraavis VIP Whale

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    good point!! :haha:
     
  12. Auggie

    Auggie Dovahkiin

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    This question coming up now has nothing to do with the timing of the Facebook IPO and nor is it really even a coincidence - the question of "Will Facebook charge a membership fee?" and surveys like this have been coming up almost every month for the last few years.

    This question and whether or not Facebook will charge members all goes back about five years when Microsoft bought a bunch of shares of Facebook:

    The amount of money Microsoft paid for the shares put the valuation of Facebook at around $15-20 Billion. That wound up causing a pretty controversy because at the time the whole dot com bubble burst wasn't that long ago and back then Facebook had no revenue stream at all, nor any idea of how they were going to make money.

    Today it might seem like advertising is an obvious way to go, but back then companies just weren't flocking to the internet to advertise and the whole Google ads scandal was in full swing... so it was generally assumed back then that the only way Facebook could survive and live up to the hefty valuation that Microsoft paid on it was to charge a membership fee.

    And pretty much since then the question of if Facebook will charge a fee or not has been coming up pretty regularly.
     
  13. JillyFromPhilly

    JillyFromPhilly Tourist

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    Zuckerberg had repeatedly stated facebook will never charge for membership - and as others have stated, since their huge user-base is their biggest asset, you can bet they never will - it would be suicide for them to even try.

    The users willingly provide them with their bigget asset - demographic info - they just have to learn how to better monetize that info with advertisers.

    If anything, what they might do is start offering a premium subscription where you get some sort of benefit or extra features for a few bucks a month - or charging for individual "priority" status updates that get placed prominently into all your friends newsfeeds (supposedly they're already close to beta-testing this) -and considering the size of their user base, all they need is a fraction of their users to opt in for either of those & they've opened up a Huge new revenue stream without having to charge their entire userbase.

    But the big revenue stream they still need to exploit better is the advertisers & businesses - they just have to figure out how to both make their advertising more effective & wring more cash out of them without ruining the user experience. But even though everyone's acting like the sky's falling because of the IPO debacle, remember facebook already makes $1 billion a year in profits as it is, so they're not going out of business anytime soon - they're just struggling with how to keep up their explosive growth rate to Keep wowing investors.
     
  14. Nevyn

    Nevyn VIP Whale

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    That's kind of a loaded question.

    In terms of features, I like Google+ better than Facebook. I think it solved many things that were problems with Facebook (like "do I really want my mom/boss to see my facebook page?") better than Facebook has, and also has some very cool features.

    But is it "as good"? That's tough because what makes Facebook good is that everybody is there.

    I have facebook and g+ accounts, and almost never use Google+, because almost everyone I know is on facebook and using it, but only maybe 5-10 of them are on Google+.

    So it doesn't really matter how good the features aren't, because its not a social network until a critical mass of people are there and using it. But if facebook charged people, you'd get mass defections and solve G+'s adoption problem.

    But if you are keeping up with distant friends and family, you might want to try out Google+ anyway as long as you can get them to try it too. One of their features is "hangouts" which are essentially a multi-way video conference. Which would be a cool way for families to touch base.
     
  15. raraavis

    raraavis VIP Whale

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    yeah, i have google+, and no one is on it! haha, it's true that for a site to be "social" it actually needs to have people. go figure. i tried to get into google+ (even though almost no one i know is on there), but it just didn't seem all that user friendly. could be that i am just accustomed to facebook.
     
  16. shhhhh22

    shhhhh22 Tourist

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    Brilliant! I totally agree with this :thumbsup:
     
  17. Chuck2009x

    Chuck2009x VIP Whale

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    Who says they can only advertise?

    If I were them, I'd just go after Amazon and eBay and sell shit.
     
  18. Nevyn

    Nevyn VIP Whale

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    Yeah, you kind of need the carrot of wanting to use it (which is everyone else using it) to put in the time to figure it out.
     
  19. mckevin32

    mckevin32 Low-Roller

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    But... Facebook DOES charge their customers. What most individuals fail to grasp, however, is that YOU aren't Facebook's customer, you are the product that they sell to their customers. Your page views, your demographic info, your mouse clicks.
    To charge their users would drive a significant portion of these users away, devaluing the product they have available for sale. Zuckerberg is many things, but stupid isn't on that list. It's on the page every time you log in. "It's free and always will be."
     
  20. Dean Martin

    Dean Martin VIP Whale

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    Exactly.....just ask Netflix
     
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