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Free: It's not all right now*
If Facebook, YouTube and Twitter don't make money off the Web, what hope is there for newspapers, and everybody else?
Meanwhile YouTube is still struggling to match its popularity with revenues and Facebook is selling commodity ads for pennies after its effort to charge for intrusive advertising led to a user backlash. And news-sharing site Digg, for all its millions of users, still doesn't make a dime. A year ago, that hardly mattered: The business model was "build to a lucrative exit, preferably in cash." But now the exit doors are closed and cash flow is king.
I never understood the monetary potential of Facebook, other than lots of people spend lots of time there; social network is a horribly obnoxious place for ads. But the broader issue is there's no money in content over the Internet. What happens when the Great Recession causes Web sites like Pajamas Media to implode...just like newspapers.
* Attytood: Making obscure 1970s musical references since 2005.