How does social network developers make money?

[Nathan]

Okay i have been asking my self, how do people involved in developing social networks make money. Zuckerberg is a billionare through facebook only. But how because we dont pay anything for using facebook.

[Evan]

Advertisements plain and simple, see the area on the right of your page that says Sponsored? That means they paid Facebook for that ad to be there. Its how most websites make money.

[Doru Ubuntu]

By finding dumb kids like you to waste their time on Facebook...

It's the advertising that makes them money, not the users.

[Alex]

Because Facebook has advertising and for every time a link comes up on the screen (regardless of whether or not you click it) the advertiser pays money.

And at 1 billion users (estimated 2012 count) all of whom check at least 3-4 times per day (more on handheld devices) that's a lot of people who see the links.

They get paid even more if anyone happens to see the ad for something and actually be something that they want or need. Any click generates more revenue.

And then there are the games. Farmville for example. Every time you buy the currency in the game in order to get this week's new and improved turnip twaddler...Facebook gets a percentage of that as part of the deal allowing them to be on Facebook.

So yeah...he's rolling in the dough from billions of billions of micro-transactions per day.

[Faith]

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