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What if Facebook charged $1/year : Would you still use it?

6 points by codegeek ↗ HN
FB has been a great execution of an idea overall even though I am not a big fan of it lately due to every changing things with it. Anyway, looking at the recent issues with fb and its dismal projections, what happens if it asks its users to donate/pay $1 for a whole year ? Is this something that active users will consider ? Personally, I don't use fb at all these days but out of the 900 million claimed active users, even if 500 million pay, wouldn't that mean 500 million in revenue for the year ? Is that pocket change ? Would that help ?

21 comments

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cdolan92
Not a chance. I think I'm one of the decently large group of Facebook users who are looking for any excuse to stop using the service.

Not only do I think its a poor way of sharing information, its always had huge swings of spam-ridden News Feeds, and forced user adoptions in terms of UI, etc.

c1sc0
yes, if that 1$ (hell, make it $10) buys me privacy & if they cut the ads
mtgx
At first I thought $1 is too low to cover for the lack of ads. But then I realized that $1 pays for like 50 average ad clicks of theirs, and who clicks that much on Facebook ads in a year? So $1 would probably more than cover it.

But I still think people would rather start using something else. It would only give Google the opportunity to start advertising Google+ as the FREE social network on TV and elsewhere.

thenomad
Rough average clickthrough ratio for FB ads (assuming we're including all the people who are Doing Advertising Wrong) is about .08%, so on average FB users are clicking one ad in every 1250 they see. 5 ads per page, ish, so that's one click per 250 pages viewed.

Meanwhile, CPC for Facebook ads is much higher than 2 cents - or I'd be spending a lot more money there. $.2 - $.4 is more common.

So assuming a FB user checks an average of 10 pages a day (which sounds about right, given, say, a few profile refreshes, a couple of message replies, a photo or two, maybe a game) that's 3000 page views approx over a year, which is 15000 ad views, giving us about 12 clicks at about $.3 each, for a customer value per year of closer to $4 or so.

Having said that, $5 per year still isn't very much to pay...

PonyGumbo
You could always try Adblock. I've never seen an ad on Facebook.
jnadeau
I've noticed that parts of ads(text) have been trickling through lately with Adblock, maybe I just need an update.
lewisgodowski
Same here. Luckily I don't spend a lot of time on Facebook, and a little bit of text on the side is a lot easier to ignore than a bunch of pictures.
aleprok
Hell no. I wont pay to them when they already have pretty much all my data.
alxjrvs
Methinks they have that data to cultivate ads for the users. If they asked you to pay and changed their policies for the paying (ability to export data, a lack of emphasis of keeping it for themselves) would it be more compelling?
mtgx
I'm not even using it right now. And if Facebook made it easier to delete the account, I would've done it by now, but I can't be bothered to look for tutorials on how to delete your Facebook account right now.
stewie2
yes, same here. I didn't benefit from using FB.
onlyup
At this point, yes I would. I bet anyone who has hundreds of pictures up would too (so a lot of the female user base). Some people wouldn't mind but I could see some being annoyed but paying it anyway. I think it could lead to people not joining and would probably be the beginning of the end for the company. I mean it would still take in a lot of money for the foreseeable future but would ultimately fail.

If Facebook were to charge when they were smaller, it would have stopped growth and allowed a competitor to take most of their user base. I would not have paid anything when I first started using the service.

stewie2
No I won't use it. It's not very useful. Following others doesn't make me happy. If google charges $1/year, I will stay.
alanfang
No because only 1/10 of my friends that use it now would continue using it.
baritalia
No. Speaking for me personally, times of procrastinating because of Facebook are long gone. After some time, you realise there are clearly no benefits. Hell, I'll say it, I think Facebook has reached its peak already (maybe not in number of users) but definitely in other areas. There are healthier alternatives to almost every service at Facebook.

And as somebody else mentioned, if Google wanted to charge $1/yr for all their services, I'd be glad to pay it. Same goes for iCloud and other Apple related services.

andrewhillman
I think FB should charge for the mobile app since more than half of users are visiting via mobile. Since FB can't make money off mobile users why not change $3 per month to use the mobile app? If FB started to charge mobile users it would change the dynamics of free mobile apps. If users don't want to pay, then they will need to use the FB website.
itsprofitbaron
"Since FB can't make money off mobile users"

Facebook is making $183 Million per year off mobile ads whilst, this may not be a huge number when considering Facebook's user numbers, the amount of users who use Facebook on their phone or even the amount of users who only use Facebook through their phone this number is certainly going to grow considerably over the next few years.

In fact, Facebook haven't even rolled out these advertisements worldwide yet and the ones they are testing are only showing every 150 or so, again this is something Facebook aren't being aggressive about their CFO David Ebersman said Facebook are "being very careful about the volume of sponsored stories in the news feed because it’s so core to the user experience."

lsc
Not for Facebook, no. I won't take it for free. However, I think that maybe you have a germ of an idea.

The thing is, what is important about a social network? the other people on the network. If you had a quality filter on that network, sure, I'd pay a buck.

Some people would even argue that the buck /is/ a quality filter... to some extent, it is, if you use that dollar to verify the identity of the user in question. (I mean, this is important more on professional networks, like linkedin) but yeah, in some contexts? that'd be great.

but, if you mean "can facebook make money from charging people a buck a year?" my guess is "probably not." - it would have to be a niche network.

helen842000
Yes, if it meant that it was ad free for me.
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