I believe Facebook will become the no 1 social network before the end of 2007, but there are some things I still miss and I hope they will sort out. If they sort them out, they will please me, grow in signup numbers and earn more cash.
Revenue Sharing on the Facebook Network
One feature that I think will make the number of sign ups and use of Applications explode is the possibility to share revenues within the network. Take the the iLike application for example: The author/programmer of the application is an affiliate for iTunes and makes a small profit each time a Facebook user buys a song from another Facebook user iLike-list. If a User B buys a media item from a list provided by User A, User A should earn a small amount of the profit the application author gets.
Possible solutions on revenue sharing on Facebook
- Facebook Applications with affiliation and/or subaffiliation between developer and users
- Get part of ad-earnings from Facebook when visitor to user content clicks an ad if ad presentation is based on content context.
- Let a user get a smaller amount for adding new active users to their network and earn even more if his/her active users add even more active users.
I believe that this will happen somewhere, users give the social networks a lot of information that the companies can use in order to earn a lot of money, sooner or later the companies must start to share in order to get new customers and good content.
Related posts:
It is possible and it has been done before. Check this out.
http://apps.facebook.com/billboard_app/