[LINK] Shirky on Newspapers, Paywalls, and Core Users

[jim birch]

Slightly tangentially, this blog post considers Facebook's economics:

** <http://www.codeproject.com/News.aspx?ntag=24241467394874425>
http://www.elezea.com/2011/12/facebook-ads-and-you/

"What most users don’t know is that the new features being introduced are
all centered around increasing the value of Facebook to advertisers."  My
source link (the Code Project) to the article had the darkly humorous
subtitle "If you're not paying, you are the product."

FB costs a billion dollars a year to run but it has 500 million plus active
users.  This equates to $2/user/year running costs. Affordable for anyone
who can own a computer.  You could theoretically charge $3 and make half a
billion profit, running an ad-free service that aims to produce value for
members not for advertisers.  Supporting advertisers presumably add a real
chunk to the running costs too.

>From this perspective, FB can be seen as a massive monument to human
economic incompetence (aka stupidity).  A little cooperation could achieve
a lot, but in practice it turns out that our biological
something-for-nothing programming means that successful mass cooperation
requires a significant level of coercion and/or opaqueness.

Jim