Facebook is experimenting with various ways of increasing revenue from it’s growing mobile user base as potential Facebook investors have not responded as warmly as expected to the initial public offering (Facebook IPO).
Facebook is experimenting with functionality that allows users to pay ‘to make their posts more visible’ to their friends. Facebook will be constantly experimenting with new methods of generating income as income has been dropping off over the past six months, yet their user base has been steadily growing. Offering users the ability to highlight their posts is one function that is being tested and Facebook is seeing how users respond to this offer and whether they will in fact pay for their posts to be more visible.
There will, in all probability, be many more new initiatives being tested as sustainable income streams from mobile content is being developed.
From a marketing perspective, the average person has around 400 Facebook friends and as you get older, statistically, you have fewer friends. So if you have to pay to only market or advertise to your friends, this would not work out so very well for the advertiser. And the truth is that people are not friends with their brand of toothpaste or with the second hand car sales guy, etc.
Mobile revenue streams are still a huge challenge for content providers as they are also a lot less likely to click on advertising or respond to marketing, than PC users.
