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I don't think they've even tried to make money yet. They've just been focusing on growth. But they have so many users now that they could do whatever they want. Ideas that would entail a chicken and egg problem for anyone starting from scratch (e.g. marketplaces) do not for them. Plus Mark himself is such a fearsomely effective person. And so young; he's only a little older now than Larry and Sergey were when they st…
Agreed. Facebook could do everything. Any economical transaction involves a social transaction as well. Facebook, can be the underlying architecture of every economy. Facebook is at the core of a large, new economic ecosystem: apps, websites, ads, mobile, causes, almost everything you can think of. They can enter in any business, and for sure they are going to expand these below, to rich an enormous amount of revenue…
> Agreed. Facebook could do everything.
no they can't. They can't turn to hot-dog seller. Sure they can try, but every time they try to do something other than social networking, they will be losing users.
> Ads: I don’t know about any platform that will be able to show ads to (soon) +1B people.
It doesn't matter to how many people they can show ads. What matters is that how much value out of ads the advertisers can get (conversion?). More and more of my friend try to advertise with FB once, and then stop. The bottom line: FB ads don't work! And its not Facebook fault! Its that they are in business of connecting people, not advertising products. By now, 99% of Facebook users' brains are automatically coded to ignore ads on the website, regardless how intrusive those ads get. At some point, one of my friend, totally non-tech-savvy actually searched for ad blocker, found it and successfully installed, because she was so annoyed with ads. The biggest FB Ads weapon, so called "likes" do not work either. I "like" Ferrari, but what does it means? I like fast cars? I like racing cars? I like Ferrari as a brand, or do I actually own Ferrari? Or am I planning to buy one. Because for advertisers, there is a huge difference. Google solves this problem via their core product: search. Wanna buy Ferrari? search "buy used Ferrari" or "Ferrari prices". Need parts for Ferrari? You search for parts. Facebook has no way of knowing any of these from simple "Ferrari like", which makes "likes" irrelevant to Advertisers. Even recently GM withdraw $10MM of Ads founds. You know, they have entire Ad department, so they know what they doing.
Bottom line: show me 10 successful advertisers on Facebook, but other than Zynga or "lose 20 pounds quickly" scams.
> Platform/Apps: They have built one of the biggest platforms with 9MM apps. Third-party apps integration and the entire FB platform is just one the most powerful things on the internet.
Well, I don't know about powerfullness, but the main reason behind FB connect is people's laziness to create another username/password. Other than that, there is not much value in connecting any Platform/App with your Facebook account. I have some friends that lost connections because they let SocialCam or other garbage to spam their wall without their direct knowledge of how this connection with FB will work. So more and more users trust less in connecting their FB with Platform Apps.
Further, Apps on Facebook do not make money. What was the last time you or anyone you know bought an Facebook app for 99cents, versus Apple App Store App? There will always be a higher quality of Apps on apple because guess what: surprise surprise! - developers like to be paid for their hard work. I won't even comment on your "facebook ecosystem may be more powerful than Apple". I know you were joking!
> Specific APIs: There is some sort of overlap between APIs and FB platform. As of today all FB APIs are free. But I don’t believe in giving for free additional value will last forever.
Well, there is not much money one can make on specific API. Sure, if an average developer makes $1,000 bucks on connecting with FB Api, then they will start charging. But as of now, there is no monetary value to use their API. That's why its free. They won't convert it to paid unless people will start benefiting off of it (make money); otherwise they would chop off the tree they sitting on.
> Coupons/Deals: They failed here, but they will not give up.
How do you know they will not give up? do you have any insights? Also, don't forget if Ads on mobile will get too intrusive with deals popping up every time I am around Verizon and simply want to check friends feed, people will start to disabling their location. Because - once again: Facebook main core product is social network, not apis, not deals and coupons, not credits! network of connected friends!
> Facebook Credits/Payments: I believe this is going to be a tremendous revenue stream over the years.
Ok, you believe in that. I believe in unicorns pooping out golden bricks. Yet you have not explain why you so strongly believe in that. With all those payment systems coming up (not to mention PayPal still strong?), but Stripe, Dwolla, even GumRoad, I think they will be in hot water here. And actually their FB connection api works against them. GumRoad adds Facebook Integration and viola! why on earth would I use Facebook Credits if all my friends are bragging how awesome GumRoad is, plus I can connect to it using my Facebook!
> Much more: there are a tons of things that they can do, from user subscriptions (imagine having just 10% of the users paying $9/month to access premium services);
Well, Imagine opening a shoe factory; there are 6B people and most wear shoes. If you only capture 1% of the market and sell 1 pair of shoes 1 times a year for $15, that's $900MM in revenues per year!! so how come I don't see shoe factories popping up everywhere?
> Facebook is basically becoming a new kind of telco.
uhm, you sound little late to the party. Where have you been for last 4 years?
> Facebook is speed. A new version of Facebook is released every Tuesday, there are 12,000 modifications per month, more than 1000 developers deliver code to be released each week. Facebook average employee is 26 years-old.
All those things are irrelevant to whether they can make money or not. How come you didn't comment on how CEO was scared of growing Instagram (competitor) and had to overtake it at any means necessary ($1B thats a lot, they can only make 15 more deals like that, given they would use all their money for acquisition).
And last but not least: they stock performance tells it all. I don't have to add much here, I hope.