During the Q&A portion of the Facebook earnings call, Zuckerberg was asked if the company would ever charge for APIs. It’s an interesting question, and one that I’ve thought a lot about as I’ve watched Twitter change the way it works with developers. I figured that the answer would be a flat-out “No”, but it sounds like this is something that Facebook has thought about.
Zuckerberg said that the company would rather go about things by introducing advertising options for developers, so that everyone can make a few dollars. With the surge of growth for the social network coming from mobile devices, the company has to think about how to monetize every pixel that is displayed to users.
It’s clear that Zuckerberg is not interested in making developers pay the bills, and I think that’s a smart way to go about things.
As I mentioned, Twitter has had to cut back on how much of its data it gives out to third-party developers, with many wondering if they’d ever charge for their API. Twitter does charge for its river of data, with only a few partners, at one point having a deal with Google to display tweets within search results.
Have a listen to the whole earnings call:
If you were waiting for Facebook to start pulling out “all of the stops” to kickstart revenue, its platform will not be a part of the plan.
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