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Re:FB down 8% at opening by philjr on Monday May 21, 2012 @11:15AM (#4003220)
I think there's plenty of opportunity for exponential growth in Revenue. When we start measuring that in users, I think something is broken.
Re:FB down 8% at opening by cube13 on Monday May 21, 2012 @11:50AM (#4003392)
The problem is that Facebook's primary asset is users. They're making money off of them(approximately $1/user in profit and $3.5 in revenue), but it's not clear if they can make exponentially more per user.

They certainly can't expand the user pool by that much, which means that they need to find a way to monetize their existing users more effectively. I think that Facebook can certainly make more/user than they currently are. $5, maybe $10/user is possible. But $100? I don't think so.

Re:FB down 8% at opening by marshray on Monday May 21, 2012 @12:16PM (#4003514)
Hard to imagine exponential growth in what either users or advertisers are willing to pay. An analogy to FB as a user service might be, say, MMORPGs like WoW. They seem to exhibit early exponential growth due to peer pressure. Yet they are never priced more than $10 - $15/mo. Often they start out as a subscription service and then move to free-to-play.

So then are advertisers willing to increase their FB advertising budgets exponentially? Does FB have something coming down the pike on a regular basis to make that happen?

Re:FB down 8% at opening by sanxiyn on Monday May 21, 2012 @01:05PM (#4003763)
Virtual goods. It is a proven revenue model for social networks.

http://venturebeat.com/2009/03/19/the-worlds-most-lucrative-...

Re:FB down 8% at opening by marshray on Monday May 21, 2012 @04:53PM (#4004870)
The link is from 2009, the title is "The world's most lucrative social network? China's Tencent beats $1 billion revenue mark".

That doesn't sound to me like a "proven revenue model" to support a $104B company with exponential growth.

Re:FB down 8% at opening by duskwuff on Monday May 21, 2012 @03:18PM (#4004409)
Soo... Facebook Gold? ;)
Re:FB down 8% at opening by Drbble on Tuesday May 22, 2012 @02:29AM (#4006529)
Netflix makes over $100/user/yr of revenue. Why couldn't Facebook?