Because an insanely high percentage of people will refuse to pay $1/year. Also, because $1 does not come close to covering the cost difference; targeted ads typically bring in 2x or more revenue per impression and the average revenue per user per year in the US is around $25.
I don't know about that. The latest estimates I heard was that you would have to pay the average American $1k not to use facebook for a year.
That doesn't mean they would or can spend $1000 on FB, but with the proliferation of subscriptions on app stores that are $10+ a month, I bet FB could get $10 a month from a large chunk of users and start to move towards other revenue models.
Ah but that is while it is free and presumably everyone else is using it. If it costs a dollar people would have to enter payment information all of a sudden, so it is putting a decision point in front of people where they have to expend effort and money (albeit a small amount of both) to keep using this thing.
If their friends seem hesitant about it maybe they won't sign up to pay for it.
This isn't to say they could make as much money with such a model, but if they were more concerned with the downsides of surveillance ad targeting capitalism as their revenue stream, they could certainly explore shifting to be a different sort of company - one with different and maybe even less revenue streams.
Funny thing that, why do we never hear about a company that wants to stay the same size or shrink? What is facebook decided they wanted to be half the size they are now expense-wise, get out of the ads business, and encourage people to use their platform for less things?
> Funny thing that, why do we never hear about a company that wants to stay the same size or shrink?
I guess it's a rhetorical question, but if you went public it would scare away all the investors, right? Who would invest in a company that does not plan to grow, and might even shrink?
Their operating costs would be massively lower if they didn't have to collect every inch of mouse movement etc. for targeting advertisements. So even with lower income, they might still be as profitable or more profitable.
