The important customers are always the ones who pay the bills, in this case that'd be the advertisers, not the users.
I think that is the fundamental point about Facebook's business model. The Facebook view is that the customers of Facebook are
a) advertisers,
b) third-party application developers,
and
c) whoever else has corporate-size bankrolls to fund Facebook.
Regular users are mere eyeballs to count to draw in the actual customers to Facebook. It has been an interesting free ride to be on Facebook, and I DO spend a lot of time there recently since I figured out how to use posted links to stimulate interesting conversations among my varied circles of friends who have never met one another. But I don't see how Facebook can be profitable in the genuine, investor-satisfying meaning of "profitable" without becoming very annoying to most users. Good luck to anyone who can succeed in providing Facebook-level service and making an honest day's wage, but so far the model is still not making sense.
I think that is the fundamental point about Facebook's business model. The Facebook view is that the customers of Facebook are
a) advertisers,
b) third-party application developers,
and
c) whoever else has corporate-size bankrolls to fund Facebook.
Regular users are mere eyeballs to count to draw in the actual customers to Facebook. It has been an interesting free ride to be on Facebook, and I DO spend a lot of time there recently since I figured out how to use posted links to stimulate interesting conversations among my varied circles of friends who have never met one another. But I don't see how Facebook can be profitable in the genuine, investor-satisfying meaning of "profitable" without becoming very annoying to most users. Good luck to anyone who can succeed in providing Facebook-level service and making an honest day's wage, but so far the model is still not making sense.