It’s a long shot but at least hear me out on this one on why I think Facebook should at least share it’s revenue. Facebook is without a doubt the largest and leader in the social media market with it’s more than 900 million users and a site usage that can rival Google and Yahoo. With it’s massive userbase, it’s a fact that Facebook monetize the contents that users are sharing and posting within the Facebook service. A status update, uploaded photos and videos, and even when you view your own profile there they are ads on the right hand side.
When Facebook officially became a public company last May, it’s been disclose that Facebook earned a whopping $3.1 billion ad revenue for year 2011 and will grow to at least $5 billion this 2012 and that’s just for ads alone. Those ads that you see practically everywhere on facebook are not just random ads that are displayed on the right side of your screen, these are targeted ads that scans for keywords in order to display the ads that may be of interests to you or me, these are not just for your statuses but also from your photos and videos. Facebook actually has an area explaining how get started on targeted ads and sponsored stories and how it works. Aside from the targeted ads that you see inside Facebook, there’s also these ads on he Logout screen.
So where am I going with this?
Since Facebook uses the user generated content to earn billions and I repeat “USER GENERATED CONTENT!!”, it’s just right for Facebook to share those revenue to users, like Google sharing revenue to publishers that display Adsense ads and Google search on their sites. I’m not saying that Facebook should pay each and every facebook users, that will surely leave the company high and dry. Facebook can actually categorize can determine deserving users that can be receive these kind of incentives. They can actually give or share revenue to Facebook’s power users, like those who have a high level of engagements, like getting the high number of likes on their posts, views and shares on the photos and videos that they share or those who uploads the most number of photos or videos. Facebook can also give some kind of incentives to users that has the most number of accepted invites and are active in inviting people to use it’s service. After all Facebook will not have more than 900 million users without the help of other facebook users.
What’s in it for Facebook?
Sharing revenue to Facebook users for using it’s service will not only assure loyalty amongst users but will also ensure that Facebook will be an active an community and not a ghost town where people just sign up without even using the service.
Then again this is just me being greedy or asking Facebook not to be greedy and share their blessings. So what do you think, should Facebook share or not share it’s plentiful harvests? Let us know in the comment box.
Image from decryptedtech
