pay for facebook ???!!! will you ???!!!

Facebook is the new king of social networking. But the site is stuck with an old business model that prevents it from cashing in on the increasing affluence of its users and the monopoly it has over their attention. Simply put, Facebook should charge.A recent study by Nielsen Claritas indicates that the top third of lifestyle segments measured by the researcher relative to income were 25% more likely to use Facebook than the bottom third. Meanwhile, less-wealthy segments were 37% more likely to use MySpace.MySpace popularized the concept of online social networking, and had relative success handing out free accounts and plastering them with ads. But this model does not appear to be sustainable; the unit of News Corp. which contains MySpace lost $363 million in the year ending June 30, and a rotating executive team is evidence that the business is attempting a turnaround. The youth and lack of spending power amongst its users is at least partly to blame for MySpace’s decline — so too is the downturn in online ad spending.

As fast-growing Facebook closes in on MySpace in the U.S. in terms of unique visitors later this year, it’s burning through millions of dollars a month (some claim it’s as high as $20 million), with no magic levers to reverse the trend in the short term.In November 2007, when Facebook took a $240 million stake from Microsoft, the investment was at a $15 billion valuation. Now it’s down to $4 billion and probably less. As Caroline McCarthy reported a few days ago, rumor has it that “one potential investor submitted a term sheet for a valuation in the neighborhood of $2 billion.”As Facebook works its way toward a probable IPO, the big question is: how can it show it can make money? Well, one way–and I’m not the first to suggest it–would be to charge a nominal monthly fee. With that in mind, I ask a simple question: how much would you be willing to pay to use Facebook per month?A lot of people I ask say they’d pay $1 a month–or, preferably, a yearly fee of $10 if paid in one shot. But some say they have Facebook fatigue and would rather quit than pay a dime.

An international love affair with Facebook is also a culprit. Not only has the site — started in a Harvard dorm room in 2004 — won over many younger users of MySpace, it’s introduced social networking to people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and older. As the Nielsen Claritas study hints, these users have jobs and bank accounts, and might be willing to shell out a few bucks a month for what is becoming an increasingly valuable communication tool in their lives.Another recent report from Nielsen says that 17% of the time people spend surfing the Internet is devoted to social sites, up 6% from a year earlier. No doubt, the quick and addictive status updates posted daily by users of Facebook and Twitter have something to do with the increase.Who knows? Social networking could prove to be an even more valuable business than news, an industry that’s giving serious consideration to charging premium subscriptions for online access. One difference working in Facebook’s advantage: many consumers have been getting online news for free for the past decade, and have grown accustomed to it. Social networking is relatively new.Facebook has shot down the idea of charging all of its members (the company’s COO Sheryl Sandberg in April said, “We are not planning on charging a basic fee for our basic services”). But the site may have plans to put a price tag on services, such as offering to print the millions of photos people upload to the site. It could also charge a nominal fee, like $1 per month, to let members avoid ads.



Washington Post will closing remaining U.S. bureaus

NEW YORK, Nov 24  – The Washington Post (WPO.N) is closing its last U.S. bureaus outside the nation’s capital as the money-losing newspaper retrenches to focus on politics and local news.”At a time of limited resources and increased competitive pressure, it’s necessary to concentrate our journalistic firepower on our central mission of covering Washington and the news, trends and ideas that shape both the region and the country’s politics, policies and government,” the newspaper’s top editor, Marcus Brauchli, wrote in a memo to employees that was obtained by Reuters.

The Post will close its bureaus in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, effective Dec. 31.

The news comes after the Post told several employees at its website that they would be laid off, and follows several rounds of buyouts in recent years.The Post, like nearly every other U.S. newspaper, has been battered by falling advertising revenue and circulation as readers get more news online for free.With a circulation of more than 582,000 copies, the Post is the fifth most read daily newspaper on weekdays, according to figures released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. It is the third most read Sunday paper, with paid circulation of more than 822,000 copies.

During the past four to five decades, it has made a franchise of covering national politics and government from the White House to Capitol Hill.Unlike other big national papers including News Corp’s (NWSA.O) Wall Street Journal, The New York Times (NYT.N) and Gannett’s (GCI.N) USA Today, it limits most of its distribution to the Washington metropolitan area.For a time, the Post and many U.S. newspapers relied on big profits at their parent companies to send reporters on coveted assignments overseas and throughout the United States.

More recently, it has been trying to cut costs as ad sales shrink. It also is facing more competition from new news outlets, most notably Politico.com, run by two former Washington Post reporters, and staffed by plenty of other ex-Post workers.Many U.S. newspapers from The Boston Globe to Tribune Co’s (TRBCQ.PK) Baltimore Sun have closed bureaus around the country and around the world as they try to save money. Many experts say newspapers have a better chance of surviving if they stop trying to cover the world and report more local news.

“We are not a national news organization of record serving a general audience. Nor are we a wire service or a cable channel,” Brauchli told the Post’s media columnist and reporter Howard Kurtz.While none of the Post’s six national reporters at those bureaus will be laid off, three news aides lost their jobs, the memo said.Still, Brauchli wrote, the Post will cover the nation.”We will continue to cover events around the country as we have for decades, by sending reporters into the field,” he wrote.(Reuters)

Microsoft says willing to pay for the exclusive access to the news company.

Microsoft says willing to pay one of the largest media companies in the world of News Corporation to gain exclusive access to the news company.Some reports from the London and New York mentioned the return of Microsoft’s willingness to pay the media company owned by Rupert Murdoch is the news content of News Corporation taken from the Google search engine.Charge of this news will only be accessed through a new search engine Microsoft’s Bing.If this trend continues the search engines will compete with each other for the cost to get access to news.this step could end the era of free news on the internet.

During the Internet users can easily get the news free of charge for the media company’s eliminate such access.In the past few days there were efforts by media companies to collect fees from the news that put on the internet.This step is taken after a newspaper circulation worldwide has decreased.On the other hand search engines such as Google to provide the news media owned by various companies for free.