by Steven Eng
In a sign of things to come, Montreal ad network Weblo has devised a clever system that allows Facebook members to “earn money from your popularity online.”. A smart algorithm estimates a person’s ad value by factoring in how many friends a person has, and presumably traffic stats as well. Apparently this is against current Facebook rules, but the bigger trend I want to point out is that of revenue sharing in the age of social networks.
Weblo is merely a pioneer in what I believe will be the defacto arrangement between members and the social networks that depend on them for content and thus advertising inventory. After all, when you write on someone’s “wall”, or blog about your latest adventures, you’re providing your network, whether its Facebook or Myspace, with content that an ad network like Google can monetize. Why shouldn’t you split some of that earnings with the social network? This would give you an incentive to constantly update and add content to your profile page and other content.
As for Facebook, instead of resisting it, they can leverage what’s already popular (Weblo estimates 150,000 Facebook members are monetizing via their ad network) as a goodwill gesture for their members. The big question is how much can individuals really make off their own content, and what should the revenue split be?
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