Facebook could be set to charge monthly fee for using ad-free version of site
By Mike Murphy, Quartz
Facebook is weighing the possibility of offering an ad-free version
of the social network, whose users would pay a subscription fee,
according to a report in Bloomberg today (May 4).
The company has looked into offering a service like this before,
Bloomberg reports, but its soul-searching became more pointed after the Cambridge Analytica scandal
resulted in 87 million Facebook users having their data harvested
without their consent. Facebook has carried out market research to
determine whether a version of the social network without ads is
something worth exploring, but there’s no guarantee it would follow
through on the idea. The company wasn’t immediately available to comment
on the report.
While there has been much debate
about the value of targeted advertising to the average internet user,
there’s no question of its value to Facebook. Only about 1% of the $11.9
billion Facebook generated in revenue last quarter came from sources other than advertising.
In that sense, it wouldn’t hurt to explore other sources of revenue,
especially in regions where consumers aren’t as wealthy as Western
users, which are the most valuable to the company. Facebook has recently started
testing accepting payments through WhatsApp in India, and CEO Mark
Zuckerberg announced at its F8 developer conference this week that the
company would be building a dating service
(whether it will free is unclear). But as long as long as advertising
revenue is still pouring in, Facebook doesn’t have much incentive to
radically upend its business model.
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