Tuesday, March 24, 2009

How to Monetize Facebook? Groups, Events, Music

Businessweek is going to ask COO of Facebook some questions. I asked one. But it's not approved yet so I can't link to it.
Basically, I wanted to know why Facebook doesn't do anything to monetize other than social ads and virtual gifts.
If you think about it. Facebook has millions of groups. Some groups want to charge membership or fees for services. Facebook should make it easy for group admin to charge membership fees via facebook. Imagine getting 3-4% of membership dues. That's huge. Meetup.com charges a monthly fee just to have a group. Of course this would be up to the group organizers to decide, if they want a fee or not.
Then imagine events. How great would it be for the users and organizers to use facebook to not only RSVP but also to pay for tickets all at the same time? I know my fashion group uses facebook to message members when they can buy tickets at our fashion stands (physical locations). Then we got to staff those booths with officers. Not only would this be a huge benefit to all users and source of revenue, Facebook will actually get people to link their accounts to paypal or their creditcards. Then whimsical purchases are just around the corner.
Just imagine all the bands and musicians out there. If they could sell tickets to their shows and gigs via Facebook, you could steal some more market share from MySpace. There's so much money in this. And so much convenience for the users. Then imagine allowing bands to sell digital music through their "pages".

There's tons more stuff you could do to make it more valuable.

Maybe even sell "Apps" instead of making every app be advertising based.

In summary, I want to see this in the news:
Facebook allows groups to charge membership and fees.
Facebook allows users to RSVP and buy tickets on Events.
Facebook allows musicians to sell digital music from their facebook pages.
Facebook brings back old layout.

Stop wasting your time trying to optimize the layout so you get more click-throughs and start innovating and creating value for your users.

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