WHERE IS MY MONEY?
The above is a question. Not a dramatic question just yet. It doesn't have any context, no real point, no drama. But we can work on that.
Yesterday I was watching the BBC documentary "Inside Facebook." Featured in it was a short interview with the ever elusive Mark Zuckerberg. Other people were also interviewed, mostly people I had never heard of, but one particular interview was with a CEO of an agency that helped his clients with Facebook advertising; the interview discussed the new 'sponsored story' implemented on Facebook.
For those who don't know, Facebook recently introduced advertisements into their timeline. In order to fool us into thinking they were not advertising, they called them "stories." Then they take advertisements on Facebook that you have LIKE'd and show those advertisements in your friend's timeline - and dub them "sponsored stories." Sponsored by you - because you LIKE'd them. Now to ask the all important question...
WHERE IS MY MONEY?
The guy being interviewed was saying that implicitly, by LIKE-ing something on the Facebook platform, you are endorsing it and that made it OK for Facebook to advertise that to your friends and charge a company to make that happen. The BBC reporter asked, 'Why is my LIKE showing up as an advert?' Just because I like something does not mean I am advertising it does it? This was the wrong question. The right question is:
WHERE IS MY MONEY?
The right question has been asked before by pundits, internet experts, newscasters, reporters and many others. The reasoning behind the question is this:
I am endorsing things that charge money from advertisers to be shown to my friends and the content on Facebook exists purely because we, the users, are present online and are uploading content - then should we not be getting a cut?
Once again...
WHERE IS MY MONEY?
Can you see where I'm heading with this?
Before we jump to the conclusion that a billion dollar corporation owes us money because they are using our content, let's take a look at a precedent. YouTube started sharing revenue from its adverts with content creators a long time ago. And they reward channel uploaders for acquiring followers, for uploading content and for distributing their content. So why doesn't Facebook pay me for my content if it's making money from it? Hold on to your hats ... in the midst of this analysis the question has suddenly changed. It is now this:
SHOULD I BE MAKING MONEY?
And now for some light number tossing...
Facebook has 500 million users. It exists because of its users and because of the content that we upload. Content that the users own and content that the users create. Facebook is about to go public at a valuation of $10BN (or £6.3BN), with ad revenues of over $1.8BN in 2010; for argument's sake let's call that a cool $2BN for 2011. Bring on the equation!
Direct value of a Facebook user >> $ 10 000 000 000 / 500 000 000 users = $20 / user (...we ain't that valuable)
Income to Facebook per user >> $2 000 000 000 / 500 000 000 users = $4 / user / year (...a revenue share of that would be negligible)
So there we have it. On our own, each user is actually not worth much at all. We only matter as a collective. The value we get off of Facebook is not, and never will be, monetary as a user - it is about sharing and the need to share.
For Facebook to exploit that volume of users to engage in a commercial enterprise with our data to make money is a fair capitalist exchange of a service for wealth generated from it - the wealth is just coming from someone other than us. So we can all relax, as can the press, the pundits, the internet experts, the newscasters and the reporters... it turns out... Facebook doesn't owe any of us any money as in actual fact...
There is no question.
