I get a lot of value from Facebook and I would be willing to pay a nominal subscription fee.
However:
• As a customer, my demands are much greater than as a user. I feel more entitled to make demands and get real attention than for a free service. Customer service becomes more important when money is involved.
• I would expect absolute control over my own data. No advertising. No selling aggregate data to advertisers. If I quit the side, my data needs to be gone completely, without a trace.
• If my friends started quitting the service in droves, due to fees, I might no longer consider it worth the money and would probably leave or wind down my involvement as well.
As a way to make that visible to Facebook (probably someone there is looking at that thread, but your vote count isn't visible...) - I would totally pay for FB also, at the price that linkedin or others are proposing.
My demand would then be data security, no advertising. Other users could stay on free service, but the apps they use shouldn't have access to my data anymore.
Yes, I think maintaining a free service would be necessary, much as LinkedIn does. Freemium seems to be working well for LNKD in a way that might be a potential way forward for FB.
I pay for bookmarks (pinboard), even though I have a free alternative right in my browser.
A paid Facebook would likely look different than today's Facebook, both in features and in financial organization, but it may be a more predictable and sensible investment.
However:
• As a customer, my demands are much greater than as a user. I feel more entitled to make demands and get real attention than for a free service. Customer service becomes more important when money is involved.
• I would expect absolute control over my own data. No advertising. No selling aggregate data to advertisers. If I quit the side, my data needs to be gone completely, without a trace.
• If my friends started quitting the service in droves, due to fees, I might no longer consider it worth the money and would probably leave or wind down my involvement as well.