Monetizing the Social Platform

How many people do you know who don’t use Facebook or anyother form of social media platform – Xing, Google+, Instagram…etc? I think youcan count them on your fingertips, and Ican’t discount parents and grandparents because my folks are on Facebook too!

Over the last few years, these platforms found a way tointegrate into our social scenes, and I find them to be BRILLIANT tools. A bit intrusiveat times, but mostly very useful. I recently found out through Facebook that oneof my favorite professors from my business program was visiting Dubai. That wasa reunion worth a million bucks. Thank you, Facebook. And I’m not the only onewho believes that. Daniel Kirkpatrick’s book about Facebook is littered withsuccess stories of how people have met or found each other after several years.

But this blog entry isn’t about general social media reunions.Instead I thought I’d discuss how companies are moving beyond setting up theseplatforms – more specifically, the monetization of social media and how to makemoney off the very popular platforms.

It is akin to the government first providing us with roadsand then installing toll gates to monetize them. Another potential example couldbe of how some hotels provide Wi-Fi to differentiate but then charge for it ata later stage. As a frequent traveler I expect Wi-Fi to be a utility like waterand electricity – included in the room rate.

Facebook (used as an example purely) introduced several newfeatures since its IPO that seek to make money from the platform. I was bothamused and disappointed when I found out about the Pay to Promote mechanismwhere corporate FB pages have to pay for a message to cover 100% of theirexisting fan base. Amused and disappointed because companies spend a lot ofmoney advertising to build a fan base only to learn that they have to payseveral times to reach out to the same fan base.

Games by Zynga and other developers have become a verypopular pastime (I find it quite irritating to see my newsfeed littered withplay requests from my friends) and they embody the monetization of the platform spirit. Initially the games start as free-to-play,but once addicted, players are asked to fork out real cash to get extra bonusesor advantages.

I recently read about Facebook testing a system where userspay $1 to message people not on their friends list – as a trial, users couldsend Mark Zuckerberg’s inbox a message for $100!!! But isn’t Facebook aboutmessaging YOUR Friends, i.e., the existing ones? Maybe there is a businesssense in messaging strangers?

This is similar to Linkedin’s Inmail service, which Iprofess that I use as a valuable business tool, but I wonder if Facebook willstart charging to even see the profiles of people not yet in my friends list.Or ask users to pay to download high res pictures from your friend’s profile toprint on a 4x6 inch photographic paper. The funniest thing would be if Facebook(or any other platform) started charging for every time you login. I bet thatwould be a natural dampener for anyone using office time to log on to checkhis/her FB status.

Manish Punjabi, Marketing Manager (MENA) at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only. Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied