When will they ever learn??? by Carole Guevin

When will they ever learn???

I find it incredibly naive that some marketers think that because people flock somewhere a market suddenly exists, becoming yet another slice in the pie of potential revenue-generation for corporations to grab.

Fundamentally, a community, unless based on buying power, will do exactly what and why it was started for in the first place, and anything added to it, unless more functionalities will twist the model out of place.

So under the guise of facilitating communal activities was there, laying all along, the big rampant lure of reaping big bucks?

Does it mean that if you create a large enough user base that it will instantly turned into big wads of (advertising) dollars?

What should have been done in the first place is perhaps include the monetizing model from the get go. For example, what if Facebook was available to a monthly fee to join, there probably wouldn't be 300 millions users to boot but let's say that there were 10M paying 5$/month it would still turn out a hefty 50M$ a month (and lowering the numbers on either side (users/monthly fee) would still be incredibly profitable because your expenses would go down accordingly).

It's hard to have any sympathy.. lesson here: before you launch - think it through.

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