The “free” economy comes at a cost

Re:The “free” economy comes at a cost by Maakuth on Monday August 28, 2017 @05:25AM (#15115399)

The thing is they get paid better than that by the advertisers for your attention. Their ARPU is estimated[1] to be $53 for 2016 and that is across all the users, not only people who are ready to spend money on online services. And as a free service, I bet they are quite a bit more resilient to churn than a similar paid offering would be.

1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2017/05/24/wh...

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Re:The “free” economy comes at a cost by nightski on Monday August 28, 2017 @06:42AM (#15115658)

What am I missing? That is less than $5 per month and I'd even pay 10-15+. They could make it optional.

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Re:The “free” economy comes at a cost by autokad on Monday August 28, 2017 @09:35AM (#15116392)

My guess is, if the users could pay to opt out, the value of the customers that couldn't would drop dramatically, and you'd end up paying substantially more

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Re:The “free” economy comes at a cost by owebmaster on Monday August 28, 2017 @08:18AM (#15116019)

You would, 99% of facebook would not. You would have to pay 1000 dollars/month together with the rest of the 1% for it to be viable, but with only 1% of Facebook, another free one would appear.

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Re:The “free” economy comes at a cost by ajb on Monday August 28, 2017 @09:25AM (#15116345)

That's the average. Anyone reading hn is probably worth rather more.

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Re:The “free” economy comes at a cost by amelius on Monday August 28, 2017 @05:28AM (#15115408)

But how do you explain that $4.65 per quarter does not match $53 per year?

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Re:The “free” economy comes at a cost by JamesBarney on Monday August 28, 2017 @06:03AM (#15115539)

The $4.65 per quarter is the revenue per user(globally). The $53 per user is a figure for North America only.

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