Over the past couple weeks, Facebook has become something of a pinata, getting whacked by the media and Wall St for everything from a clumsy IPO to a flimsy revenue model. Not to pile on but we found some interesting data in our system on the topic of whether Facebook’s 900M users love the service so much that they would pay for it (and how much).
Below is the question we asked:
We started with a universe of 9,027 respondents, weighted to represent the US population. Of those, 28% identified themselves as non-users of Facebook. When the numbers were recalibrated to include ONLY Facebook users, this is how it looks:
– Â 87% of Facebook Users would terminate their account rather than paying anything for it
– Â 6% of Users would pay $1 or less per month
– Â 3% of Users would pay $2 or less per month
– Â 4% of Users would pay $5 or less per month
One positive way to look at this would be to add up the potential revenue for Facebook based on these numbers. 54M users paying $1/month, 27M users paying $2/month, and 36M users at $5/month would add up to $288,000,000 per month in revenue for Facebook.
Unfortunately for Facebook, the reality would be far harsher. The advertising revenue lost from the attrition of 87% of Facebook’s Users would be severe. And, practically speaking, the remaining 13% of users would be much less excited about a small social network that consists of 87% fewer of their friends.
