{"id":3129,"date":"2013-07-24T19:26:25","date_gmt":"2013-07-24T19:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/should-facebook-offer-ad-free-version\/"},"modified":"2013-07-24T19:26:25","modified_gmt":"2013-07-24T19:26:25","slug":"should-facebook-offer-ad-free-version","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/should-facebook-offer-ad-free-version\/","title":{"rendered":"Should Facebook offer ad-free version?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"cnn_strycntntlft\">\n<!--startclickprintexclude--><\/p>\n<div class=\"cnn_stryimg640captioned\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i2.cdn.turner.com\/cnn\/dam\/assets\/130722164323-biz-stone-story-top.jpg\" alt=\"Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has some ideas for improving Facebook.\" border=\"0\" height=\"360\" width=\"640\"\/><\/div>\n<div class=\"cnn_stryimg640caption\">\n<div class=\"cnn_strycaptiontxt\">Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has some ideas for improving Facebook.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><a name=\"em0\"\/><\/p>\n<div class=\"cnn_strylftcntnt\">\n<div class=\"cnn_strylctcntr\">\n<ul class=\"cnn_bulletbin cnnStryHghLght\"><!--google_ad_section_start--><\/p>\n<li>Twitter co-founder Biz Stone suggests Facebook launch a paid version without ads<\/li>\n<li>He thinks people would pay $  10 a month for the service<\/li>\n<li>Stone also said he found Facebook&#8217;s settings to be too complicated<\/li>\n<p><!--google_ad_section_end-->\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><!--endclickprintexclude--><!--google_ad_section_start--><!--startclickprintinclude--><\/p>\n<p><strong>(CNN)<\/strong> &#8212; Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has been using Facebook quite a bit lately, and he has some friendly advice for the company, from one social network to another.<\/p>\n<p class=\"cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph2\">Stone thinks Facebook should offer an ad-free subscription version for $  10 a month.<\/p>\n<p class=\"cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph3\">A premium version of Facebook could appeal to people who don&#8217;t want to wade through the barrage of ads for a juice-cleanse delivery service or Edward Snowden fan fiction (these are the actual ads I currently see on my Facebook account).<\/p>\n<p class=\"cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph4\">&#8220;In general, the ads on Facebook don&#8217;t seem particularly useful or engaging. However, ads on the service are universally tolerated because that&#8217;s what makes Facebook free, and free is nice,&#8221; Stone said<a href=\"http:\/\/redirect.viglink.com?key=11fe087258b6fc0532a5ccfc924805c0&#038;u=https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2Fthe-biz-stone-collection%2F47715441d0be\" target=\"_blank\"> in a post on Medium<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph5\">The company could also throw in some special features for these Premium customers to sweeten the pot, according to Stone, though he doesn&#8217;t suggest anything specific.<\/p>\n<p class=\"cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph6\">He does a bit of math to show how lucrative a paid tier could be. If just 10% of the service&#8217;s 1 billion active users dropped $  10 each month, the company would make $  1 billion a month.<\/p>\n<p class=\"cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph7\">For the first quarter of 2013, Facebook reported making just $  2.85 per user from ads in the U.S. and Canada. That number is lower globally.<\/p>\n<p class=\"cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph8\">Advertising makes up 85% of Facebook&#8217;s revenue. The rest comes from payments and other fees, which include social games and virtual goods, and amounts to about 65 cents per user for the quarter.<\/p>\n<p class=\"cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph9\">The subscription model is common among tech companies offering content, such as music or TV shows on Pandora, Hulu and Netflix. But it hasn&#8217;t taken off with many social networks. LinkedIn offers premium accounts that have beefed-up search, mail and other features starting at $  20 a month.<\/p>\n<p class=\"cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph10\">As an April Fool&#8217;s joke this year, Twitter announced a premium service that, for the low cost of $  5 a month, would include all letters in tweets, including vowels. The lowly free service would be rebranded Twttr and include only consonants.<\/p>\n<p class=\"cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph11\">Stone isn&#8217;t joking with his new suggestion, though. In his post, he also said that Facebook was too complicated.<\/p>\n<p class=\"cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph12\">&#8220;The truth is, if I can&#8217;t figure an application out in a minute, I usually move on to something else. Too many settings and options frustrate and confuse me. I like making simple stuff because I enjoy simple stuff,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph13\">He recently hired a few ex-Facebookers for his new startup, and they guided him through optimizing all the settings for the least overwhelming experience. He&#8217;s now using Facebook regularly too keep in touch with family, but like any regular Facebook user, he still has gripes about how it works.<\/p>\n<p class=\"cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph14\">This isn&#8217;t the first time someone has suggested a paid, premium version of Facebook. But because he&#8217;s Biz Stone and Twitter is a hugely successful social network, people are paying attention &#8212; unlike when your distant cousins or people you knew in high school complain in Facebook&#8217;s news feed.<\/p>\n<p><!--endclickprintinclude--><!--google_ad_section_end--><br \/>\n<!--no partner--><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/pixel.quantserve.com\/pixel\/p-89EKCgBk8MZdE.gif\" border=\"0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" \/><br \/>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/rss.cnn.com\/~r\/rss\/cnn_tech\/~3\/doSN6qOT_CE\/index.html\">CNN.com &#8211; Technology<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has some ideas for improving Facebook. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone suggests Facebook launch a paid version without ads He thinks people would pay $ 10 a month for the service Stone also said he found Facebook&#8217;s settings to be too complicated (CNN) &#8212; Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has been using Facebook [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[852],"tags":[861,520,860,238,384],"class_list":["post-3129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking-news","tag-adfree","tag-facebook","tag-offer","tag-should","tag-version"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3129"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}