I found this article to be interesting. Think about how broke a lot of Americans would be if they had to pay to be on Twitter or Facebook? According to this article, not broke at all because people would not use them. From day to day we talk about how important social media is and the future of it, but yet people do not want to pay for it. When compared to other everyday "needs" such as means of transportation and internet use that we typically pay for, how come many will not pay for social media. I found this to be funny but I must agree that if I had to pay a monthly charge for my Facebook profile, it would no longer exist. Do you think that paying for Twitter and Facebook is something in social media future? Would you pay to retain your profiles? If so, how much?
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I always think about this... we all take for granted how many services these social media tools provide for us on a daily basis and how it's all free. I remember when LiveJournal decided it was going to charge members monthly, and even though the fee was minimum, I stopped using it completely because I didn't like the concept of paying for the Internet. Wikipedia is free. Google is free. I think that a subscription to Twitter and Facebook accounts would decrease membership initially. And then, of course, people who couldn't deal without these outlets for their lives would end up paying. Maybe not. Maybe Facebook will become as sketchy as MySpace and people will just drift away from it naturally... I can only hope. But seriously I know there's been rumors about Facebook charging a membership fee and I know a lot of people who would be unhappy. Also, people who can't afford paying for the luxury of a social networking site are still people, and still deserve to connect with their friends and loved ones regardless of their socio-economic status. I can't see membership fees being THAT astronomical, but it would be seen as an unnecessary expense for some.
Personally, I would deactivate my Facebook account if I had to pay a monthly fee. However, that is not where I see a problem if Facebook (or Twitter) started charging users. My concern is how Facebook, for example, would collect these fees. It might be easy in countries where credit/debit cards are widely used, and anyone 'qualified' to be on these sites should and can own one. However, many African countries still have cash-based economies, and if users had to pay to maintain profiles, this might be hard. Even if users own bank accounts, very few banks issue VISA cards and/or MasterCard. Facebook will need years and years of research and planning to implement this. I am hoping it doesn't happen. Or maybe in 50 years.
I think that it would be company-suicide to start charging for these services. With so much open-source technology, a new social network would be created immediately... lots of them most likely. The hardest thing for the average users, I think would be to aggregate all of their contacts to the same social network.
Julie mentioned LiveJournal, but the important thing to remember is that it *can* still be free; you would just have to tolerate annoying ads everywhere.
And that, I think, would be the most likely model for any service to introduce a payment scheme: you can either pay a small monthly fee to surf without interruption, or use the services for free, but with annoying pop-ups. If this happened, I think that a lot of people who might initially cry "I'll never pay for this!" may change their minds-- this way, they would not be "losing" a social media tool to a pay-based scheme, but rather, gaining a service in the form of a pop-up free option.
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