Would you pay for community?
Would you pay for access to your favorite online communities? If so, which communities would you pay to access and what would you expect for your money?
Facebook is one of the most important communities I access on a regular basis. Would you pay to get to Facebook? It’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently. Blogger Craig Daitch wrote about how his Facebook account was recently disabled - at first he wanted an apology and an explanation - now he just wants access to his photo albums. I would certainly share his pain if my Facebook account was disabled.
I would gladly pay $10 a month for Facebook - yes, $10 a month even during a time where I’m cutting back on my personal budget. Let me explain why I would want to pay up and also get your thoughts.
For the $10 fee, I would want Facebook to back up my personal network - which includes close friends, family, and content creators across the globe. I realize now I have 83 photo albums up on Facebook, over 650 important connections, and tons of posted items and personal notes. I don’t expect Facebook has any responsibility to maintain my user generated content (UGC), my network of hundreds of friends, the groups I created, or any other feature I use enthusiastically. I wonder if you agree with me and would want to pay Facebook for reliability and back up of your content and network - take this poll:
I feel the same way about Twitter as I do Facebook as - Twitter is necessary in my digital life. But lately the micro blogging service has not been reliable - at least for me. What if I paid 9.95 a month for premium access? I certainly would for about 10 different reasons. Blogger David Rosenberg recently asked if Twitter can keep its hugely dominant position to become a real company with real revenue. I pose the complimentary question, would Twitter lose you as an active member if they started charging? And in return for the fees - maybe you would get better access and additional services.
I am blogging about this “pay for service” concept with online communities because I feel I need reliable Facebook and Twitter archival services. Surely, I can’t be the only one out there. In addition, I’m curious to know how many people would pay for access and back up of their UGC and personal network on the community of their favorite band, TV show, celebrity, movie franchise, etc.
For instance, I would be willing to pay for two communities I access related to the funk band P-Funk. I’m really passionate about using both of them to connect with fellow P-Funk fans. I like to look at the memorabilia the fans share, including videos and pictures of the band, as well as their fan insights. The exact same P-Funk fans seem active in both of the two communities I use, so I wouldn’t choose one over the other because there are disparate networks of fans on each site. Would I pay to access two separate P-Funk fan communities? Maybe not, and each community has its pros and cons. One community - MyFUNK - I find has a lot more rich media, videos and pictures. The other fan site - One Nation Board Room - seems to be easier to navigate and read.
Besides looking for your feedback in the poll here, I am researching now, looking for some data points on how successful subscription based online fan clubs are, because I would imagine if you are passionate enough of a fan you would be willing to pay a fee if you saw enough value in the fan club and the UGC and personal networks growing within them. I’ll report back if I find any hard data points, or you can share them below in the comments. However, access and subscription fees could lead to more exclusive communities. I read Seth Godin’s book ‘Tribes’ over the holidays and Mr. Godin certainly made the case for ‘exclusivity’ saying it can lead to a higher value community.
Thanks for taking the poll and listening. I hope Facebook and Twitter do add archive / back up services in the future and I’m interested in hearing your other thoughts about how to maintain the UGC and networks you build on branded entertainment sites.
Posted by Chuck Fishman at 02:00PM PST
Michael S. Scherotter Jan 26, 2009
Chuck,
I think that the top social networks have been successful because the barrier to entry has been very low: free with ads.
Now that you have your network on Facebook/Twitter, moving to a paid model would cause some users to leave but others would stay.
Would you have started using Facebook/ Twitter if there were an entry cost?
I do think that adding “premium services” is another way to add payment but you have to be careful because you need the volume of free users to empower the “network effect.”