Felix Stalder on Thu, 24 Jul 2014 15:25:17 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> paying users for their data |
Occasionally there is the idea that the big internet companies, which collect and monetize user data, should pay their users directly, as they are, after all, the original producers of all that data. Jaron Lanier has made this argument, among others. So, lets make a simple calculation, based on Facebook's latest, better than expected, quarterly numbers. users: 1,32 billion revenue: 2,91 billion profit: 0.791 billion This is an incredible profit margin. Now, lets assume that Facebook would use half of that profit to pay users for their data. 395'000'000 / 1320'000'000 = .30 So, the average user would earn about 30 cents, per quarter. If it's correct that Facebook users spend 40 minutes per day on the site, then adds up to roughly 60 hours per quarter. If you divide the 30 cents income by the 60 hours work, the you end up with an hourly-wage of $.005. Now this is obviously the roughest of ballpark estimates you can make -- and I would be happy to see a better one -- but on the face of it, it seems to indicate that viewing one personal data as an economic asset is really a lousy idea, no matter how you slice it. -- ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| http://felix.openflows.com |OPEN PGP: 056C E7D3 9B25 CAE1 336D 6D2F 0BBB 5B95 0C9F F2AC # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org