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.
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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.
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?
Virtual goods. It is a proven revenue model for social networks.
http://venturebeat.com/2009/03/19/the-worlds-most-lucrative-...
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.
Soo... Facebook Gold? ;)