Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has suggested that Facebook should charge users as Facebook moves forward
The co-founder of Twitter has painted a picture of what could be the future of Facebook with his statement that users should be charged for a premium service that features no advertisements.
Biz Stone (what a name that is, a man destined to make big bucks in the world of business) stated that he had been away from Facebook for a while as he found all the addons and tweeks had simply become too much, but recently returned to the social networking site to see how it had evolved.
What he noticed was that the ads "don't seem particularly useful or engaging" (according to
what he states on his blog post) and added that to make some real cash, they could introduce Facebook Premium.
He suggests a charge of $10 a month, and if even just 10% of users signed up for it, then that would be $1 billion a month in the Facebook coffers. Not too shabby it has to be said.
The successful model he uses as an example is Pandora, a music streaming service which charges users for an ad-free experience on their site, and has seen a huge growth in people signing up for their premium service.
With generating revenue a key concern now that Facebook is public, this is an avenue which they could well explore in the future. We're not so sure that would work on Facebook or even if they'd consider it, but would you pay $10/€7.50 to use Facebook if you didn't have to put up with all the ads down the side or promoted posts?
Hat-tip to the lads at Mashable
