Nobody expected such a news story this week, but it seems that Facebook will no longer be a free service. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced at a press conference in Menlo Park, California that the company is unable to keep up with the costs of Facebook and a monthly fee for users is inevitable.
Zuckerberg has explained that Facebook is growing with hundreds and thousands of members signing up each day and the advertisement system Facebook currently uses is not enough to cover all the costs the social media giant needs to keep the site running. He also said that if Facebook continues to remain a free service, there is the possibility of it having to shut down because of the lack of funding.
“After thinking long and hard about this decision, at the end of the day, we were forced to add this monthly fee. If we don’t do something about our rising costs now, Facebook could cease to exist in the near future.” – said Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook currently has about 1.317 billion users and if just %75 of those users start paying the $2.99 monthly fee, the yearly profit would be about $3 billion. Astounding.
Reportedly, Paul Horner, Facebook spokesperson, said that there could be a way to waive the monthly fee for users who don’t have the money to pay. He said that even though Facebook would begin implementing the new user fee starting November 1st, they don’t want to lose their members just because they can’t afford to pay the monthly subscription fee. He said that users should update their status with the following statement: I AM POOR FACEBOOK PLEASE WAIVE MY MONTHLY FEE with the #FacebookMonthlyFee hashtag included.
What do you think? Is Facebook looking to get a little more money out of its users? Are you going to ask them to waive your monthly fee or do you think Facebook is worth paying for?
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