I keep seeing people ask about FriendFeed's business model. Couldn't FF do something like ads like these? I'm sure Seagate would pay to do something like that but ONLY IF the numbers here are big enough and influential enough. - Robert Scoble

They could work together to raise interest. Let a true power user (YOU) announce a Seagate giveaway (ahem, remember Seagate?), and the use of some otherwise heavy graphics. Mutually beneficial for all. Like rss ads that don't suck: reach, pay, help the host, and please the users. FF makes it free as a pilot cause Seagate is adding value (great giveaway), get's the data, you get , oh you don't need anything Robert ;)) - Ed Shahzade /NextInstinct

This is different from Magpie how? - Rahsheen ™

Rahsheen: Magpie does NOT give any revenue to Twitter or FriendFeed. I find that to be pretty nasty, to tell you the truth. I'm proposing new ads that FriendFeed would profit from, which would help us all out. If FriendFeed doesn't find a way to stay in business then this will all go away long term. - Robert Scoble

I like a lot how facebook does it. Just add some ads every 10 entries on the lists - Chacha102

@ Rasheen There's big difference between FF and known users participating with an established entity (fewer ads, high quality, scam proof, dough goes to the house), than 100,000,000 freelancers with magpie pasting any and everything - Ed Shahzade /NextInstinct

@Robert it must suit his humor to watch, maybe analyze them. But I can't wait for @Ev to nuke the ticks - Ed Shahzade /NextInstinct

There is the wide-open right-hand side. And more stories lately about temporary keyword ownership (ie YouTube). Methinks more text wouldn't be effective, though, either within posts or on the rhs. So what appears on the rhs? Not a traditional or text ad. One irresistible notion online is that of a "deal" (ie Slickdeals). So maybe a company could rent a set of keywords for a week, and on the rhs is a visually-unique link to a deal. - Christopher Galtenberg

Ed: Of course I'd pay $10 a month to auto unfollow anyone who used Magpie, so maybe there's a business model there, too. :-) - Robert Scoble

I would be ok with something like that; perhaps an ad every 10 or 15 items. Further, I would think that a company would gain tremendous value by promoting their twitter/friendfeed/etc in such a manner- what better way to reach out to customers who are actually interested in your product? - David Adam

Like Chacha's comment. Ads every few entries. Also wonder if FriendFeed has some sort of infrastructure play. - Hutch Carpenter

Ah, Ok. I see where you're going, although I must agree with Christopher. I don't think Ads within the content would be very effective. I do suffer from acute ad-blindness, though. - Rahsheen ™

Robert, you touched upon it in FriendFeed Feedback the other day, but is it really a pertinent issue? It's not like FriendFeed is a case of Yahoo where they have to answer to shareholders looking for the Benjamins. They don't take solicitations and they haven't shown that they are hurting for capital. Before the price question comes into play, it really should be about the usability and audience questions. Heck, the last time people got worked up about a startup's business plan as a means to fix the startup's woes (Twitter), it wound up not having anything to do with the root problem (which was a lack of talent/foresight, not capital). - Mark Trapp

Heck, because it doesn't have SMS, I wouldn't mind seeing an ad in my desktop client. That might just be me though - Chacha102

I'd rather pay $5-$10 per month for no ads. How would you like it if every time a friend IRL communicated with you, they were required to read 30 seconds of nauseous ad copy first? Giving each user power over targeting for their followers may work though, since most of their followers are likely to have similar interests. But leave that choice up to the users and their built-up markets of eyes and brains. - scorpusmaximus

If the ads were targeting according to topics/links we post about (an ad about SEAGATE would be more for the tech crowd then people talking about politics), that might be something. - David Bisset (sn)

One day Friendfeed and Twitter will be able to sell their databases at profit to a giant compute cloud AI looking to study socially-networked humans. Until then, ads on the side will be fine. - Mason Lee

Mark: at some point these services either need to get bought by someone who can fund them forever, like Google or Microsoft, or they need to have some way to make money. Bret and Paul aren't in this for charity and their investors (VC's) aren't either. But they are smart and will figure it out. I just wanted to have some fun with people who keep asking about the business model here. - Robert Scoble

Not to mention I have a very real responsibility to Seagate, which is the reason why I can go around the world shooting cool people and companies. So, I'm thinking about my own business model, especially since I've spent so much time here instead of on my blog or doing more videos for FastCompanyTV. - Robert Scoble

I think we're slowly approaching the local maxima for what advertising can support in terms of services. If you look at how many services say their revenue model involves advertising, and the number *actually* making significant revenue (break-even / profitability) there's a pretty big gap. I'm honestly watching with curiosity to see if FF can make this kind of transition. - mikepk

I think FriendFeed would be an awesome integration with Google Reader. I can see it now. The discover section would suggest feeds from the people you follow on Friendfeed, and you get new feeds so easily. - Chacha102

Robert: that might be an interesting tac for FriendFeed users: figure out ways to monetize your individual feed. Maybe even some way that FriendFeed could help you out with it, like YouTube or Blip does. For FriendFeed itself, I gotta believe someone at the office has a notepad with that answer. :-P - Mark Trapp

Google+Friendfeed= all my life in their hands (more than it already is). No thanks! - WorldofHiglet

Oh yeah... I remember that one post that describes how basically if you use all the Google Products, you basically have your life in their hands. Too lazy to get the link though - Chacha102

Why not stay private, with a finite staff, and like Wikipedia ask for donations? Maybe get a power-tool in return? Like continued use of real-time... otherwise a 2-minute delay. Let people pay as they feel benefit from the service. It's not an IPO recipe for making mad money, but I'll bet the service will always get paid for, with decent salaries. - Christopher Galtenberg

But I don't think there is a much better choice, because having FF+Any large company would just end up the same way. Any of the big companies already control a large section, and adding your social life to it just gives them too big of a hold - Chacha102

@Christopher Unfortunately that's not how the VC funded startup game works. If you're not swinging for the fences, you are *not* going to get 5 million in funding as friendfeed has. If you say you just want to provide a service and pay decent salaries, you'll get the door slammed in your face. - mikepk

Subscription levels for following more than N friends? - Christopher Galtenberg

@Christopher - that's also the tragedy of the system. Another startup, bootstrapped and looking to make profits and pay decent salaries up against a VC backed company is at a major disadvantage. The VC / heavily funded company can deploy a scorched earth strategy, where they can provide lots of services for free to drown out the other guys. Unfortunately this also leads to higher expectations for free services, and the same company ending up needing to figure out their own revenue model. - mikepk

@mikepk, thanks for the thoughts back. I guess it just depends on where FF wants to get to. Trying to remember where FF came in, relative to when acquisition was still a realistic goal for soc-net startups... Possibly FF still benefits from the aura Twitter is holding onto, a valuable eventual asset to some larger company (though besides Google, it's hard to imagine who... no one really in this current environment) - Christopher Galtenberg

i'm really starting to feel like a definitive micropayment model is in order, if google can charge us .05 cents a click, why is it still (practically) impossible to toss someone .05 cents for an insightful comment or microservice - Ziad

friendfeed is a built-to-sell platform (nothing wrong with that). no reason to look for a business model in the short term... - Jeremy Toeman

I think if it does sell ... whoever buys it is either going to mess it up by trying(badly) to intergrate it with something (Try Microsoft Live Feed), or will just have too much information (Google Friends anyone?) - Chacha102