There are a number of ways of paying for a social network. Among them:
- Ads
- Subscriptions
- Loss leader for another product
- Microtransactions
Facebook does ads.
Subscriptions hurt network effects.
Google+ ran into a brick wall of network effects.
Nobody uses Flattr, and it's hard to imagine people paying a buck for video filters or other premium features.
It'd be great to solve the problem without building another Facebook, but my best guess is that if Facebook goes down someone else builds another system basically identical to Facebook and we all have this conversation again 10 years in the future.
There is an interesting anthropological conversation in here: some segment of the population might be willing to pay for services that protect their privacy, but due to network effects, an integrated society will tend towards the lowest common “customer profile” denominator.
Hmm. Maybe that’s not right. Maybe the lowest quality content will be on the most common denominator platform - maybe that’s what we’re seeing. And maybe that’s why I’ve effectively left Facebook - the folks I want to share and connect with aren’t there.
- Ads
- Subscriptions
- Loss leader for another product
- Microtransactions
Facebook does ads.
Subscriptions hurt network effects.
Google+ ran into a brick wall of network effects.
Nobody uses Flattr, and it's hard to imagine people paying a buck for video filters or other premium features.
It'd be great to solve the problem without building another Facebook, but my best guess is that if Facebook goes down someone else builds another system basically identical to Facebook and we all have this conversation again 10 years in the future.