Facebook company greed could hurt small businesses..

Facebook was already making money hand over fist because of all the data mining from users. Where do you think Zuckerburg got his billions before this fee went into effect? The users on FB were already "paying" FB with the amount of data they allowed them to collect. This is just greed plain and simple.

This.

Facebook was already making money hand over fist because of all the data mining from users. Where do you think Zuckerburg got his billions before this fee went into effect? The users on FB were already "paying" FB with the amount of data they allowed them to collect. This is just greed plain and simple.

This.

Its mostly wrong. He got his billions from the IPO.

The first two quarters since going public, the stock has made 12 cents per share. I doubt the total profit from Facebook over its entire history is positive yet.

Its trading price, as low as it is since the IPO, is still trading based on future expanded earnings, not anything that it has earned yet. If we consider that .12 per share to be typical, that is .48 per year, with the shares trading about $22. So that is about a P/E of 45.

To justify a PE that high, they need a HUGE expected growth rate.

Let's look at it another way:

If Facebook is focused on the USER, does adding a cost to small businesses that I have put in the effort to "Liking" make my experience better?

I know I can jump through hoops to get a similar experience, but it's just another pain for me.

The users are no longer Facebook's customer, though... we don't generate enough revenue, and so they have to find new sources of revenue.

Their assumption is that the amount of added headache won't cause end users to leave, thus forcing business to cough up the cash to cover the cost of having the end users...

I'm not sure it will work... Once businesses actually do the math on how much a facebook site costs, it might not be worth it...

I saw the word "Facebook" in the new topic title and therefore ignored it but it doesn't seem to go away. So I need to ask the question. Are there people who actually care about these "Likes" that are discussed? I finally got on FB a couple of years ago for ten months before I deleted my account. It was the most obnoxious waste of time. My wife and I can live with each other quite nicely, more or less, but FB was almost as bad as having everybody I've ever known in the house. If that's not a circle in Dante's Hell it should be! Apparently I didn't waste enough time. FB kept pestering me via my actually interesting place, email account, that I hadn't logged on in a couple or three weeks. Easy fix, cancel FB.
So, I search for local or out-of-town restaurant websites a lot and frequently find FB accounts. I've not been unable to access them when I select that option despite the fact I am (free at last, thank God almighty) a FB account free person, so what is the issue? Is FB saying the FB sites of restaurants will not appear when I do a search? So far pretty much anyplace I Google comes up with either a normal website or a FB page. What am I missing?

I'm with Lonnie.

I see no reason for a Facebook account, and I've never had one.

A business should set up their own website, even if it's just a blog with permanent links to menus, etc. I'll never understand why a business would turn over their entire Internet presence to a third party, like Facebook, that can change the deal anytime they want.

Crazy.

I'm with Lonnie.

I see no reason for a Facebook account, and I've never had one.

A business should set up their own website, even if it's just a blog with permanent links to menus, etc. I'll never understand why a business would turn over their entire Internet presence to a third party, like Facebook, that can change the deal anytime they want.

Crazy.

For me, it was all about having different options to reach my customer base. We have a website, we have a Facebook page (as well as a group page too, which is still free at this moment), as well as a Twitter account. I also send out email newsletters as well about events at our stores. The reason I do so much, is simply because everyone is not going to go to the website, but they might be on Facebook, or they might follow me on Twitter. Its an easy and cheap way to get your message across to many people. I am with you in the sense that you cannot rely solely on Facebook, but you have to have several options to communicate.

I saw the word "Facebook" in the new topic title and therefore ignored it but it doesn't seem to go away. So I need to ask the question. Are there people who actually care about these "Likes" that are discussed? I finally got on FB a couple of years ago for ten months before I deleted my account. It was the most obnoxious waste of time. My wife and I can live with each other quite nicely, more or less, but FB was almost as bad as having everybody I've ever known in the house. If that's not a circle in Dante's Hell it should be! Apparently I didn't waste enough time. FB kept pestering me via my actually interesting place, email account, that I hadn't logged on in a couple or three weeks. Easy fix, cancel FB.
So, I search for local or out-of-town restaurant websites a lot and frequently find FB accounts. I've not been unable to access them when I select that option despite the fact I am (free at last, thank God almighty) a FB account free person, so what is the issue? Is FB saying the FB sites of restaurants will not appear when I do a search? So far pretty much anyplace I Google comes up with either a normal website or a FB page. What am I missing?

Ha! Yes! I agree. FB is a colossal time waster. The "pay to post" thingy is, from my understanding, meant to charge a company, band, restaurant, etc a fee based on how many "likes" they have in order to reach 100% of their audience. I was reading Mark Cuban's twitter feed the other day and he showed a link with FB trying to charge the Dallas Mavericks (they have thousands of "likes") five grand per post to reach their full audience.

But I also agree with Todd in that FB and Twitter (Instagram too for that matter) are really just different options to reach your customers. Many spend a lot of time on there and don't get an RSS feed say, from a website, that will give them real time updates. The services mentioned above do that. I am going to adjust/evolve from this so I am not running scared I just don't like the greed committed by Facebook.

I wonder if some other local food trucks/street vendors would share their thoughts? I know many rely on these services to get the word out about events and locations. I wonder what they think?