Many ways have been tried to make money online. Social networks seemed a new way to generate revenue. Whether from advertising on the website due to the flow of users to targeted ads based on user profiles, advertising seemed a sure fire way to make money using social networks. However, advertising revenue from internet marketing has not generated the income Facebook has hoped.
Internet advertising revenues are falling. This is partially due to an expanding internet, where an exploding number of sites are competing for a more slowly growing number of users. Then add in the growing array of advertising blocking software and browsers that do the same, and using internet marketing to make money online has become very, very difficult. Thus Facebook cannot rely on this income source to pay their bills.
Facebook recently made its users upset by changing the user agreement to claim the user content of the website in perpetuity. User information could be sold to advertisers, even if users closed their accounts to avoid continuing the usage agreement. All photos users posted could be sold to anyone else by Facebook. User poetry could, theoretically, be sold off for chapbooks. To say that users were upset was an understatement. The user outcry, once realized, ended the policy. It isn’t yet known how much, if any, money Facebook made on this practice. However, the fact that they attempted such implies they are becoming desperate for revenue.
What then is Facebook to do? Social networking websites provide a service. In the real world, we pay for services we receive. If Facebook users want to continue using the service, they may have to do what the outside world requires – pay for it themselves.
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