Advertising
Would you pay for no Facebook ads?
A site called Real Fresh TV, which appears to be a European social media consultantcy, has an interesting proposition for Facebook that it has laid out in the form of an open letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg: allow people to pay a monthly fee and thereby not see any of the “social ads” that Facebook is planning to insert into news feeds and so on. The only wrinkle I can see is that it might be difficult to accomplish (or Facebook might not want to do it) since the whole point of having social ads is to take advantage of the networks that people have with their friends, and if you cut off those messages than that reduces the value. Still, not a bad idea, really — Facebook still gets revenue, and users get the choice of whether to see them or not. What do you say, Mark?
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I guess some people are loose enough with money that they are paying to send "virtual" gifts so maybe there are some people that would pay for membership?
Maybe I am a Luddite or just an old fart but I think both ideas are ludicrous.
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And thanks for the note about the posting time. I guess Wordpress doesn't automatically adjust for daylight saving time :-)
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The service is either free (but you have to put up with our targeted ads), or you pay for no ads (unless you want some, in which case Facebook gets paid twice -- once by the advertiser, and once by the subscriber).
And then maybe Facebook would starting paying members who forward a 'cute' ad to their friends. But not with real money -- it would be the Facebook Buck, redeemable in subscription credits or at the Facebook store, where members can buy Facebook T-shirts, hoodies and other branded merchandise.
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The more I think about this, facebook should be paying the users for handing their data over to advertisers.
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http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/09/28/memo...
The question is whether anyone will try it or whether they fear angering the advertisers. As a user, I'd love to pay to supress ads in a variety of places.
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I'll just stop using FB as well.
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Mark will do fine.
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Mark Zuckerberg may have his hand on the wheel at Facebook, but never forget that his subscribers also have the option of changing their traffic patterns, and that will most certainly affect the future path of the SS Facebook as well.
I was once a loyal CompuServe member (73067,1500) in the pre-Web days, happily paying by the minute for 2400 baud access to the OS/2 and Canopus forums. But times changed, and after a few months of using the Web and leaving my CompuServe account dormant, I closed the account -- it just wasn't relevant any more. And today it seems impossible to imagine a world without Facebook, but fads come and go -- and with a few wrong turns, the site could implode in favour of the next big thing, and then we'll be reminscing about the good old Web 2.0 days of Facebook.
Perhaps by then it will be just another answer in the 2010 version of Trivial Pursuit .. "What Social networking site got its start in 2004 at Harvard .."
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The pressing question is actually: 'How Will Facebook pass the EU's Privacy Test?'
There are fairly strict Data Protection laws in the UK, for example.
Here are a few:
* Data may only be used for the specific purposes for which it was collected.
* Data must not be disclosed to other parties without the consent of the individual whom it is about, unless there is legislation or other overriding legitimate reason to share the information (for example, the prevention or detection of crime). It is an offence for Other Parties to obtain this personal data without authorisation.
* Individuals have a right of access to the information held about them, subject to certain exceptions (for example, information held for the prevention or detection of crime).
* Personal information may be kept for no longer than is necessary.
* Personal information may not be transmitted outside the EEA unless the individual whom it is about has consented or adequate protection is in place, for example by the use of a prescribed form of contract to govern the transmission of the data.
* Subject to some exceptions for organisations that only do very simple processing, and for domestic use, all entities that process personal information must register with the Information Commissioner.
* Entities holding personal information are required to have adequate security measures in place. Those include technical measures (such as firewalls) and organisational measures (such as staff training).
Culled from a really comprehensive post on Mashable here:
http://mashable.com/2007/11/09/facebook-asks-ca...
My offer of £7.50 per month for a Facebook subscription without ads now seems a little... foolish. What's the point if agreeing to the Terms of Use mean that the privacy laws designed to protect me above, cannot.
Hmm...
Having said that, it will be interesting to see how Facebook's core demographic take to the ads.
It is quite possible that they might not care.
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