Their moves over the past 2 years seem to indicate this is where they plan on going. Perhaps charging partners a fee per user?

Their moves over the past 2 years seem to indicate this is where they plan on going. Perhaps charging partners a fee per user?

So I think the major point would be to extract money from users who are willing to pay to use Facebook, but leave the people who wouldn't pay alone. The challenge is in price discriminating the former from the latter, while still getting everyone to come back to your site

Now don't get me wrong, you could absolutely generate a ton of value from charging people, and a lot of folks would stay. But you should also remember that Facebook raised a TON of money and that anything other than a massive multi-billion dollar homerun is a failure case.

thanks for stopping by Rohit! Hope all is well.

And this is the money line that applies to more properties than just fb.

I'd sure as hell pay it. FB told me when my cousin's had babies and when my niece moved to Cornell. A great way of overcoming grudges of our parents.

I've always wondered where online advertising is going and have maintained that it is simply not sustainable 3 – 4 years out. We're heading in that direction. Web companies are going to have to start charging for the most basic functions and everyone will come back to reality.

How about just charging users $1/month? Don't they have millions of users? Does everything have to be ad based? Certainly, that's what investors are hoping for – as well as the FB founders; however, I'm not even sure that people even see ads when they go online. I have to believe that most folks are at least a little like me – they have filtered ads mentally, that they don't even see them anymore. They've trained their eyes to naturally seek meaningful content.

Are we talking about the Joe Plumber Hockey Mom who is an infrequent web user? I have to think that they're the same way or will be over time. Unless forced – like with a DVD or television commercial, they won't look at them. Going three or four years out, what is the sustainable revenue model here? Will sites start sponsoring buttons – in other words, to get this certain piece of functionality, the user has to click on the HP-sponsored button?

Going back to a pay model, perhaps users will be paying on a per click basis for certain functions within social apps and ad-hacks will be relegated to more traditional means? Alternatively, advertisers will only be paying for splashes (mind/eye-space), and always paying a very high premium for clicks.

MySpace was my immediate response to this title, too.

David, your myspace nature is coming to light!