In the 21st century, Facebook has become the site which is known by almost every individual on the face of the earth. Facebook has become the medium to socialize, interact with people, make new buddies, share joys, and without any surprise it has become the biggest platform of the same. It is accessible to all sorts of people. It enables you to see, share and react on whatever is happening in the world. The good part about Facebook is, it is very innovative. Every now and then, it comes up with new things to make its users more addictive.
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You shouldn’t be amazed, if a day come and they say that there’s a meeting on Facebook that’s because Facebook has launched a new feature associated with Skype so that you can have a convenient video chat with the person.
Facebook is really an awesome place. It helps you to stay connected with your dear ones. But in this process, one should not forget that, Facebook is an incorporated association, which is founded to do business. By providing you various social services, Facebook is minting money. The following are few of the incredible ideas used by Facebook to make more money off you:
$1 Messaging Service
The latest buzz in the market is that the Facebook engineers are launching many more paid applications which would include sending messages to the person who are not already included in your friend list for $1. Before this, if anyone sends you a message then, depending on your mutual friends and links, the message was either sent to your spam mails or directed to your messages. Now, according to the new feature, the message which earlier was regarded as spam, could now be shown as a regular message into the recipients inbox by paying $1.
Gifting Service
Zuckerberg recently announced the Gifting service of Facebook. If you want to deliver a card or any present to your special ones, just log in to Facebook, select the gift you want to purchase, select the friend. Your friend would be prompted for the address and the gift would be delivered to the address given by him. You can send various kinds of gifts which include T-shirts, Posters, Wines etc.. You can also dedicate a birthday song.
This is not all about the gift feature; there are few more stuffs, which are worth noting in this Gifting feature. You can do swapping, by which, you can swap your gift with another gift within a specified time limit, and you have to swap it in around 24 hours. If your friend has not seen your gift till two weeks, then after two weeks Facebook will cancel your order and refund your money. Currently this service is only available in the US, but soon it will be open to everyone around the globe.
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Gaming Service
The games on Facebook are developed, so that Facebook users can socialize with other users who like to play games to pass time. Anyone can play CityVille, it’s free to join. But, usually to be a step ahead of the competitors in the game you have an easy option to get some rewards in the game by paying Facebook your real money. You must be familiar with this if you had ever played any of the “Villes”. There’s no harm in paying money to be ahead, and there’s a lot of debate about whether the feature will ruin the social games but, in the end it’s just a game on the internet!
But the crux is; these “Villes” are so addictive that, the users tend to spend hours playing it; and in the end, to compete with their friends, they make use of real money and this make Facebook richer!
Post Promotion Service
Few months back, Facebook introduced a new feature named Promoted Posts. With this paid feature, Facebook helps you to promote your post by making it visible in the news feed of your friends and friend’s friend. Facebook provides various promotion options. The more you want to spread the post, the more you will have to pay. This of course helps the marketers, but also makes Facebook fatter.
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Facebook would be paid?
Recently there was a word on everybody’s mouth saying that Facebook will charge it’s users per year. I feel that, if Facebook would come up with any such crap, then Facebook will be scrapped. But I am not sure, Zuckerberg can make everyone so much addicted that, there would be one day, when everyone will be ready to use the paid Facebook service!
What do you think; will Facebook ever charge it users? What are your views about the earning methods of Facebook; is it undue advantage of its population? Are you addicted to Facebook? Do share your views in the form of a comment below!
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Hi Zainil!
I totally agree with your post! Facebook has indeed become very efficient and successful in monetizing anything possible, and it is not just them who are enjoying the advantage, but everyone I guess.
Hello Sarah,
Yes you are right, everyone is enjoying the advantages. But may be in the long run, everyone would suffer due to the addiction.
A year back, when the entire globe was addicted to FarmVille, I had heard of stories saying that, many corporate entities had lost a lot of revenue, just because their employees were playing FarmVille all the time & showed no interest towards the work!
I just hope that, FB becomes a non addictive platform! 🙂
Yes, Facebook is only trying to increase their overall revenue and have completely forgot about user satisfaction. The post promotion service is quite irritating for regular Facebook users.
Hi Priyanshu,
I agree with the 1st part of your statement, where you have mentioned that FB is only trying to increase its overall revenue. FB is a business entity, thus it main aim has to be profit & it is efficiently achieving its aim!
But apparently it has not forgotten the point of user satisfaction. Rather it is taking the advantage of its high level user satisfaction to mint money! 🙁
It seems like if it’s not one thing with Facebook it is another. Within the past year or maybe two my Facebook usage has dropped substantially. I just don’t like the site as much as I did a few years ago. I don’t know if other people have been doing the same thing or not, but a lot of my friends that used to be on there a lot rarely post anything too. Corporations and big business will try anything to make more money.
Hello Ray,
I am still not irritated with FB! 😛 I am the victim of Zuckerberg’s business model! 😉 FB is fun.. All my friends are still active on FB.. But thank God that I have never played any game on FB till now.. Thus I could say taht I am addicted to FB but not to the FB apps! 😎
My sister is addicted to Facebook too. She couldn’t resist checking in several times on Christmas Day even. I am older than her and many of my friends have kids and a family. I think that this is part of the reason why my friends aren’t on there as much. At least some of them with real little ones.
Ohh.. during the festivals, I also login to facebook & send wishes to all my friends.. but I then spend all my time with my family! I feel that spending time with family is really very important, family is the best part of life! 🙂
Yes Zainil… As we all know addiction of everything is bad. Same is happening with Facebook. These days kids are spending more time on Facebook rather than study.
Hello Amit,
Facebook is an addiction, but may be, it could be used in a good way. I really wish that someone would come up with some teaching of online education, which will have its base platform as Facebook. The students will surely enjoy studying & would learn in a better way! 🙂
I hope this dream of mine comes true! 🙂
Nice post Zainil. I think they want more and more money so monetizing each and everything. Time to switch to G+. 😛
Heheheee.. But I think, Larry Page & Sergey Brin are surely smarter than Zuckerberg! 😉
Well, now FB is a publicly quoted company, they have to deliver to their shareholders. Thus, the advertising everywhere.
Hi Steven,
You are right. Now Zuckerberg has started to use the money of public, thus he has to think of equity returns. But few months back, when I was observing the share prices at Nasdaq, I had found that, the price of FB were falling! Still I hope that the shareholder of FB get high returns in long term! 🙂
This is why I encourage my friends to develop their own blog/site instead of Facebook, which their hard work will turn to nothing compare to their own control blog/site. Even to have your own domain store will take advantage compare to fb/store.
Hello Tan,
Having a blog is indeed the awesomest thing that an individual can have! 🙂 🙂 Once can really learn a lot from a blog. I am blogging from last few years & I would say that my blog has developed me!
But comparing a social network with a blog? I am not getting it well! However, about investing the time that you spend on a social network like FB, on a blog of your own, would be super beneficial! 🙂
Facebook is showing ads in the sidebars as well as in the images. I am really addicted to facebook cause my day starts with checking facebook notifications on my phone. 🙂
Hello Naser! 🙂
The ads are really very irritating.. Specially the pop ups, thank God these pop ups are not on FB!
Between even my days start & end is static – FB ! 😉 Its been a long time that I am planning to change my FB schedule, rather planning to reduce my time on FB, but my plans are going totally in the reverse order, every new day, I am spending more time on FB ! 😎
Long Live FB ! 😉 😎 😀
This is right saying that a human cannot be satisified and hence even if mark has billions of money, he still want to earn from every corners of FB. Thats why he is monetizing each and everything there on facebook.
Hi Diana,
Such a true philosophy! 🙂 Humans are really very greedy! 🙁 I wish a fairy comes & changes the entire human brain system of the entire human population ! 😎
Making every user to pay every year is a bad idea. If that happen, Facebook might go down and new social networking site might take it’s place.
I couldn’t agree more!! Facebook is becoming more money hungrier than ever and its at the users expense both in the sense of money and user experience. I understand the advertisements as they need to deliver to their investors BUT to have a post actually seen by all my followers I have to pay to “promote” it??
All good things must come to an end and Facebook is only cutting their own time shorter.
This is exactly right! Facebook is becoming more and more about the money. I believe charging money to send messages and making posts not show up as often is unfair but we all still use it anyway which lets them get away with it. I think if they don’t chill out on it though, Facebook can phase out. I know I wont be using it if they start charging a user fee which seems to be the route they are taking. Thank you for this post! 🙂
I agree with your post fb is really become very efficient and successful in monetizing and everything on facebook.
Thanks for Posting this Amazing article. Facebook has become One of the powerful Social media platform for bloggers, advertisers for internet marketers,Bloggers,Advertisers,Promoters who want to promote their online brand