How much does Facebook earn from one user, $1 a year? No one would've died if they switched to a $1/year subscription model. People tend to respect companies that are honest with them. Except Facebook won't ever be able to regain its reputation, but still.
> Facebook’s revenue per user is roaring. For Q4 2018 vs. Q4 2017, it’s global ARPU increased by 19 percent to $7.37, and the US-Canada ARPU by 30 percent to $35. Between 2011 and 2018, the social network global ARPU rose nearly 6x, while the US-Canada grew 11x. With a domestic revenue per user of $112, Facebook is the equivalent of a publisher charging $9 a month. It does that with a free service.
Assuming that the only users who would be willing to pay are those who use one of FB's services at least once per month; then FB would need to charge $26/yr to match their current revenue. Given that they already have 2.7 billion MAUs it's unlikely that they could grow their way out of such a change, and serving ads is ultimately inexpensive.
In Q4 alone, they made $53/user in US/Canada, and $10/user worldwide. This revenue is not evenly distributed, and the type of user who is willing to pay $50/quarter for FB is worth much more than that to FB advertisers.
Doing that would equate to $2.7 billion a year in revenue. They currently generate about $70 billion a year. So, yeah; they'd pretty much die if their revenue dropped that much.
Imagine how much money they could save if they stop redesigning every little thing all the time to squeeze every last cent. Imagine not needing hundreds of developers working on a single app.
