how does social networking sites earn money?

[mandar]

i was wondering how does these social networking sites work??how do they earn money.
People who use these sites doesn't pay them...then from where they get money to run their companies??

[Norm]

People and companies pay to advertise on social networking sites like Facebook.

[Shaky B]

You know when you go to Facebook and you see the ads that magically match the things you "like" on FB?


Guys like me pay those sites to show those ads to you in hopes that you will click and buy something. You may not buy anything, but plenty of other people do.


And that's how they make money.

[Sef]

I'd say by posting ads. Say you log into Facebook and a video of some product pops up. Say it's an ad for a new cheeseburger at McDonald's. McDonald's paid Facebook so that they can put their ad there. McDonald's gets paid by showing people on Facebook their product which makes people aware of it which makes them go buy it.

[prudhvi]

consider facebook, it has nearly 900 million subscribers and popular. Companies which need promotion pay to fb for their brand advertising . hence fb earns money and companies got their promotion of their brands etc.

[Amit]

People and companies pay to advertise on social networking sites like Facebook

[Nripesh]

They earn money by advertisements .

[Tom]

1st of all - the social sites earn money by the advertisement. There are a lot of money invested by others to create an ad on the social sites like facebook, linkedin, ning etc. You can go through: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-do-soci...wondering/

Think about it. On a social network, they have all your information. And the rights to sell it (check your terms). They take down your information, and display ads customized for you. They know you race, age, location, likes, dislikes, likes of your friends and family. Facebook just started to make money within the last year. But its worth billions and billions because the information it holds it worth billions.

That's why twitter is so huge. Its data mining. A personalized ad is 1000 times more valuable than a generic ad. That's why you see websites that tailor to specific markets, make more per ad than a broader website. This is because they have more information in regards to who sees the ads.

So all social networks make money from mining information, stats, and customizing ads based off that information. And sometimes, they just sell the information with the stats.

This is why Google is so rich. because they harvest the data collected from you searching, and they maximize ad click through rates.

Hope that helps

[?]

Here's a cool way YOU can earn money on social networking site. There is a new form of marketing, that is sort of like word of mouth that will pay you to talk about products on your social networks. Check out http://www.chatterad.com to see what I'm talking about. You won't get rich but you can get paid.