One thing everyone knows about Facebook is how many people use it – finally breaking the one billion mark. But does high usage equal profit? Not entirely.

Facebook makes the majority of its’ profits from advertisement, something that most website companies profit from. Many users recognize this as well, and find it perfectly easy to ignore the random links on the side of the page. Unfortunately this has limited the amount of money one can make off such a successful site – to the roughly 10% of the screen that just about anyone can look away from.

Zuckerberg is beginning to look into new ways of making profits – floating the idea of promoting different posts people make by paying a fee. The problem with the idea is that Facebook users are almost guaranteed to be somewhat tech savvy – and would quickly see through the money making scheme. It’s almost as easy to leave a social media site as it is to join one – look at the ghost town that is now Myspace and AOL.

If Facebook introduces too many blatant attempts to reach into its’ users wallets, the user base numbers will plummet, causing the site to become less and less useful, and weakening the power of the company as a whole. It’s a slippery slope, and the ever so popular site needs to be careful if they want the spotlight to remain on themselves.

In response to Joey Luo’s blog
https://blogs.ubc.ca/joeyluo28/2012/10/08/facebook-beyond-advertising/