It's to late for the pay for service model. If that was the direction they wanted to go in, it should have been implemented in mid growth stage prior to maturity, when the delta was steep. Instead, they were betting (I am assuming) on some magic pie-in-the-sky startup evaluation that never materialized (well, except for MS). Monetizing early caps your potential worth to logical and realistic measures. Wouldn't want that in the silicon magic venture valley.
Now that most of the features have been realized and are available for free, and the growth delta is decreasing, and people are unlikely to pony up. They gambled and they lost that round. That does not mean they will walk away with nothing... but it won't likely break any records. Timing is critical and bankable fortune telling is rare. Mark On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 1:49 PM, Will Evans <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I don't disagree with you Andrei - I think some people would value it - > between $3 and $12/month. Its currently free - and I see 0 value in (hence > my page is so dead), but some - like DaveM, do value it, and might even be > willing to pay for the privilege of being super-poked. > > On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 1:43 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk < > [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> On Oct 9, 2008, at 5:27 PM, Jared Spool wrote: >> >> What I've been praying for, to learn what Facebook's business plan is, >>> will be finally answered! >>> In 3 years, once Mark Zuckerberg figures it out. >>> >>> http://is.gd/3MSY >>> >> >> So... I have to wonder out loud: Why not just charge $9/month for a >> Facebook account? I know that's so 1992 with an that oh-so-dated America >> Online model, but hey... At some point, we'll all finally get past the >> silly notion that stuff should always be free. Advertising can only support >> so many businesses in this space. >> >> Sure, they'd piss people off (too bad, I say) and lose a bunch in the >> process. But if they retained only 25% of a user base of around 50M that are >> willing to pay $9/month or $99/year, that's 12.5M users, and a yearly >> revenue of something like $1.2B a year. The question is more would they be >> able to keep 10M to 12M people paying $9 a month, I think. >> >> Blizzard has around that for World of Warcraft paying $15 a month, and it's >> just a game. I think Facebook would be able to pull it off. >> >> If Facebook or Google started charging for accounts (Google then gets money >> for its applications like Docs, Spreadsheets and such), it would open the >> door for everyone in the software business to get back to having real >> business models that aren't built out of straw during a fire season waiting >> for it all to go up in smoke at a moment's notice. > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
