Following Mark Zuckerberg’s hint at an ad-free but paid version of Facebook, the question on our minds is “how much could it cost?” As it turns out, not that much.
How much do you spend on subscription services each month? What about each year? Spotify, Netflix, Hulu? On average, those services cost anything from $8 to 11 or 12, right? But Facebook? No way! It’s always been free and you’d like it to stay that way, right?
Well, if you’re willing to make the privacy tradeoff, you can continue using it for free. But just out of interest, now that a paid version is somewhere on the cards, we’d like to know:
How much would it cost? And would it cost the same everywhere? More importantly, would you be willing to pay for it?
It doesn’t matter if you like Facebook or not; If you’re on it, it has some use for you. It has some value for you. Now, if you could quantify that value, how much would it be worth? Ten bucks a month? Easily. According to TechCrunch a paid version of Facebook would probably cost you between $11 and $14 per month. How did they figure that out?
Well, if you take the $19.9 billion Facebook made last year from 239 million of its users as an amount that needed to be compensated for, then that gives us roughly $7 per person. While that would be the lowest price, it could end up being closer to double that – around $14 a month or $168 per year.
Of course according to Zuckerberg, “people like not having to pay for a service,” and I happen to agree. Let’s also not forget that most users around the world wouldn’t be able to afford a paid Facebook. At the end of the day having a free Facebook “aligns with [its] mission the best.” Despite this, Facebook has to cater for different types of users – those with a disposable income and those with none. This leads us to a “tiered” membership service with some people paying, and some others not.
In any case, Facebook would also have to make the paid version more attractive to encourage some users to stay. Would VOD or music streaming sway them? Probably.
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