Home > Innovation, idea for others, internet > A business model for Facebook…

A business model for Facebook…

April 29th, 2009
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It seems obvious once you think of it… why not add a “click to call” button, and enable telephone calls on Facebook?  Think of overlaying Skype on top of Facebook…

Why does Facebook need this?  Well, because they are losing money on a massive scale:  see our KookyPlan report here (needs updating, I know):  http://kookyplan.pbworks.com/facebook

Think about how silly the current system is… Lets say you use facebook to reconnect with old friends (as most people do), but then when you find your old high school buddies, the best that Facebook has to offer is a “wall” in which you can post messages, or “chat” to kind of talk with each other.

But, why not enable voice?

Think about the possibilities…Facebook transforming itself into a massive online phone book with all of your favorite friends a click away.  Then, like Skype, they could charge for calls to land lines (like “Skype-out”, which actually makes money).

Then, get this on your cell phone… and look out all competitors, this could be the voice-provider of the future….

any thoughts?

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Brian D. Butler Innovation, idea for others, internet , , ,

  • It's a well taken point. Given the new emphasis on privacy settings, Facebook is one step away from being the front-end for an ENUM database. VoIP cannot be all that far behind. But this begs the next question: how does one monetize IP-to-IP voice?
  • ahhh....the trillion dollar question (becuase everything is in "trillions" these days)

    You are right that if facebook were to add voice calls, they would find resistance to any attempts to charge for IP-to-IP voice.

    The best I can offer them for now... is a suggestion to follow the lead of Skype, and copy the "skype-out" model...for a decent revenue stream (admittedly, it may not be enough to cover the horrible red-ink bleeding off of facebooks financials)

    If i come up with the answer to the IP-IP dilemma, I'll post my thoughts....
  • Ryan Goodfellow
    I realize this is a smidge off what you were going for, but I am pretty sure I saw the iPhone has this feature (iphone.facebook.com). If you are browsing someone's profile, there is a call button where their phone number is located. When you press the Call button, it does some javascript code to launch the call function on the iPhone. It's obviously not Skype, and requires and iPhone, but I'm sure with the public release of the Facebook API for programmers, something along these lines will come along eventually!
  • Good tip, thanks Ryan & Alex!
    the iPhone is really amazing.
    not only a great product, excellent service, great design...but it makes money (unlike Facebook, which burns cash at an alarming rate)
  • alex goodfellow
    It works... just really really janky. You have to travel to that site via safari then click on the availible persons name and then IF they have a phone number poster then you can call em. Never mind the facebook app for the phone it doesn't even have the feature.
    nice try though.
    skype would be better. Maybe thats what those guys are trying to buy it back from ebay.
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