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Facebook Should Pay All of Us

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Re: Facebook Should Pay All of Us

#81

Post by zhanwei »

Yhippa wrote: post #9

I'm not the biggest fan of FB or for the fact that I pretty much have to use it to keep up with friends and family these days. These are some things that you get in exchange for giving up your information: A place to store photos A platform to publish your photos A communications platform (Messenger) A platform to stay officially connected to things you "like" and their updates Near instant publication of your brain…

You will somehow need to give your personal information for a social network to work and to receive these services in return. For e.g., u need to identify yourself and your friends to make sure only your friends can see your photos and vice versa. Question is how much info is too much.

Re: Facebook Should Pay All of Us

#82

Post by prostoalex »

Zelphyr wrote: post #29
kdamken wrote: post #7

This is silly. Yes, if you're not the one paying, then you're the product. However, I do get things in return - I get to connect with people I don't get to see too often anymore and see what they're up to in their lives. Everyone and their grandma has one, so I know if I'm trying to find someone they're on there. It also reminds me of people's birthdays, which I'm pretty terrible with otherwise. People do get things…

From what I observe[1] they're on it all the time because its a diversion. TV is another worthless diversion[2] but at least the TV networks don't (yet) sell your private information. But ultimately there is very little on Facebook that I see as critical or something I can't get from a myriad of other sources. 1: Watching my wife peruse FB but I suspect she is an example of a typical user. 2: I'll grant that worthles…

Selling information is a one-time transaction. In case this was happening, the revenue stream for Facebook would dwindle by now as (a) anybody who wanted some private information would already own some and (b) some players who bought it before might try to recoup their costs by re-selling it, so other potential buyers would buy some "gently used" private information from Nike, Coca-Cola or Progressive Insurance.

Yet, two things are happening.

1) Advertisers keep coming back for more.

2) FB revenues (primarily derived from advertising) are up, not down.

How come?

Re: Facebook Should Pay All of Us

#84

Post by sparkzilla »

I'm surprised there is no mention of tsu.co, a Facebook clone that attempts to pay contributors revenue-share based on their social connections. The site rapidly grew to around three million users last year until people began to realize that 1) they couldn't make any money (too many people chasing too little revenue) and 2) the system encouraged feed spam. Also, as a clone it didn't feel different enough to take people away from FB, which has a lot of value as a free tool for managing your friend and family connections.

Re: Facebook Should Pay All of Us

#85

Post by aw3c2 »

austenallred wrote: post #75
wahsd wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that so many people fail to realize is that the internet needs a totally different structure or service that operates on a totally different premise that retains data with their owner, their person. I relish seeing the day that Facebook is jettisoned for a system of distributed and individual ownership of profiles and data, like the internet should be. Humanity strayed at some point when the nefarious actor…

You know no one forces you to use Facebook, right?

Society kinda does. If all your peers use it to communicate, you would be a hermit if you did not participate.

Re: Facebook Should Pay All of Us

#86

Post by gress »

stdgy wrote: post #69
gress wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has far more personal information than Facebook.

In general, I like to think of it as: Facebook knows the facade that you want to present to the world. Google knows what you want (or what you want to know). Now, each of these is actually only addressing the front-facing portion of the business. Each company obviously has much more information when you begin to consider their link tracking, advertising network tie-ins, communication mining and external domain 'likes…

That might have been true in 1999.

Today Google knows:

- What you search for - What websites you visit - Who you communicate with - The contents of your email - Your physical location

...and the list goes on.

Re: Facebook Should Pay All of Us

#87

Post by williamcotton »

prostoalex wrote: post #76
williamcotton wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the model was flipped, so instead of advertisers paying Facebook to cover their operation costs, individual users covered their own operation costs, and perhaps the advertisers directly subsidized individual users at the time of publication ? This would mean that people who wanted to pay could turn off advertising and just use Facebook as pay-as-they-go service. I dunno what kind of accounting they're doing a…

> What if the model was flipped, so instead of advertisers paying Facebook to cover their operation costs, individual users covered their own operation costs, Why would that be a good deal for Facebook? With current revenue scheme they cover operation costs, R&D, various projects that do not directly contribute any revenue, various internal projects that fail and no one else hears about them, growth and marketing cam…

Whatever kinds of creative accounting that they're currently using cannot be as accurate as properly pricing the value and costs in a standard double-entry manner.

While having the overall inputs and outputs accounted for is enough to give earnings reports for public investors, it certainly doesn't give their management very much to work with! How would they have enough information to make strategic decisions on, as a simple example, "should we cater to lower-end content creators or higher-end content creators?".

Compare that to the information say, a spark plug manufacturer, has on their business. They can make reasonable assumptions about deciding to build higher quality spark plugs with more expensive materials and selling to less customers with higher margins or they can decide to make lower quality spark plugs with lower margins sold to more customers (and many other scenarios). They can do this because they know exactly the cost and value of the various inputs and outputs in their business. The miracle of accounting!

Re: Facebook Should Pay All of Us

#88

Post by jeffreyrogers »

Zelphyr wrote: post #29
kdamken wrote: post #7

This is silly. Yes, if you're not the one paying, then you're the product. However, I do get things in return - I get to connect with people I don't get to see too often anymore and see what they're up to in their lives. Everyone and their grandma has one, so I know if I'm trying to find someone they're on there. It also reminds me of people's birthdays, which I'm pretty terrible with otherwise. People do get things…

From what I observe[1] they're on it all the time because its a diversion. TV is another worthless diversion[2] but at least the TV networks don't (yet) sell your private information. But ultimately there is very little on Facebook that I see as critical or something I can't get from a myriad of other sources. 1: Watching my wife peruse FB but I suspect she is an example of a typical user. 2: I'll grant that worthles…

> but at least the TV networks don't (yet) sell your private information.

It's only a matter of time haha, I'm aware of at least one startup that is trying to do targeted TV advertising.

Re: Facebook Should Pay All of Us

#89

Post by throwaway7767 »

austenallred wrote: post #75
wahsd wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that so many people fail to realize is that the internet needs a totally different structure or service that operates on a totally different premise that retains data with their owner, their person. I relish seeing the day that Facebook is jettisoned for a system of distributed and individual ownership of profiles and data, like the internet should be. Humanity strayed at some point when the nefarious actor…

You know no one forces you to use Facebook, right?

> You know no one forces you to use Facebook, right?

You know that even if you don't use facebook, they still collect data about you from other people, right?

Re: Facebook Should Pay All of Us

#90

Post by austenallred »

williamcotton wrote: post #87
prostoalex wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if the model was flipped, so instead of advertisers paying Facebook to cover their operation costs, individual users covered their own operation costs, Why would that be a good deal for Facebook? With current revenue scheme they cover operation costs, R&D, various projects that do not directly contribute any revenue, various internal projects that fail and no one else hears about them, growth and marketing cam…

Whatever kinds of creative accounting that they're currently using cannot be as accurate as properly pricing the value and costs in a standard double-entry manner. While having the overall inputs and outputs accounted for is enough to give earnings reports for public investors, it certainly doesn't give their management very much to work with! How would they have enough information to make strategic decisions on, as…

Facebook isn't optimizing for value-per-user accounting accuracy. They're maximizing profits.

Say they could charge per user, and they would know each user was worth exactly $.20/year. That would make for easier accounting, certainly - they could pin that down to an exact number.

But what if alternative is more complex, but much higher? It would be something like "Most users are worth $14/yr, some are worth $6/yr, and some are worth $.10/yr." The value per user varies widely, but they can pin the average value per user down to $7/year.

They choose the latter because $7 > $.2; they'd rather have more profits than simpler accounting.

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