It's Sergey with his Google Glasses on. He's running naked up and down the hallways at the Google X Labs, twirling his penis and communicating in morse code by blinking.
I don't think it'd be as effective. When you search on Facebook you're looking for people - usually a specific person. How much of the searching on Facebook is of commercial interest? Whereas I bet a huge amount of traffic on Google is people searching for the very things advertisers are willing to pay for. Products, restaurants, viagra, etc. That's what normal non-Trevs use it for.
Google gets about 80% of its revenue through search. When you search on Google, you're looking for a link somewhere. Sometimes, you get a link that's been sponsored. It's unique because they can sell the very thing their users are looking for. On a site like Facebook, you go there to talk to your friends or whatever, and they put some ads up. It's a completely different model IMO.
I'm talking about services, not media. Video, print, radio, and other forms of media have obvious ad models and for obvious reasons. Slapping ads on random services is something else entirely. Billboards don't support unrelated services. I've never seen a shop give stuff away for free and pays for it by having a billboard on the side. People put ads on things like ATMs but the ATMs don't hand out free money.
Besides which, TV isn't a service, it's entertainment. It's interrupted by other bits of entertainment that are paid for. In that sense, it's more like Google's model, where you're getting a sponsored version of what you're asking for, than the normal web monetization model where you try to monetize using something completely unrelated to the reason people are there.
It's ridiculous. If I set up a chain of coffee shops that were totally free, it's obvious they'd be massively popular. I could easily get millions of regular customers. But putting ads on the wall would not be a feasible source of revenue. Trying to sell people some unrelated product would not be a feasible source of revenue. The people are coming for the free coffee. You can't monetize that traffic. They only care about the free coffee.
Besides Google, who have a totally unique revenue model, who's really making money online by "monetizing" free services? Why do people still believe this shit?
All these ideas are hacks though. They've got payments already, analysts are talking about media and coupons. But how does that tie into Facebook? People are just thinking "they have 900 million users, sell them something." But you can't use just any revenue model on any website any more than Starbucks could start selling cars or McDonalds could do DVD rental. Those 900 million users are there for a reason and that reason isn't to watch movies or listen to music or buy anything or look for deals. It's a communications medium.
