If you could, would you pay for Facebook?
That was one of the underlying questions users weighed in the past few months as they learned the world’s largest social-networking service had conducted experiments on nearly 800,000 people in 2012.
The experiment tried to answer a nagging question: When users see happy things as they’re surfing through Facebook’s website, does that make them unhappy?
Inside Facebook are researchers called the “data science” team, who worked in conjunction with university researchers to slightly tweak what some users saw in order to test that theory. Their results said one thing, but the way they conducted their research said something entirely different. Politicians and critics cried foul, saying the concept that Facebook could manipulate people’s emotions stepped over the line.
“It highlights the insularity of Silicon Valley (with its data-centric culture) and the young age of Facebook’s employees,” Laura Martin, an analyst at Needham, wrote at the time.
Facebook will have an opportunity to discuss that recent kerfuffle in its second-quarter conference call when its results come out on Wednesday after the market close.
Analysts expect the company to report net income of $853.3 million on $2.8 billion in sales, according to surveys by Thomson Reuters. Excluding items such as stock-based compensation, Facebook is expected to report 32 cents per share of earnings, a 68 percent increase over the same time a year ago.
The question of whether we would pay for Facebook is more an intellectual exercise – the social network is so inherently tied into the ad business and generates strong enough profits that a pay model isn’t really an option. But that doesn’t mean Facebook is free.
Read the full piece at CNET:
http://www.cnet.com/news/how-we-pay-for-facebook/