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Five Freemium Features Needed For Facebook

Five Freemium Features Needed For Facebook

Facebook LogoDespite Google’s global grip on our planet, Facebook has emerged as one of the premier sites not under the search giants influence (minus a few mobile details of course).

While its 500 million plus users appreciate the fact that Facebook is free, truth be told the social network can not rely on Facebook gaming credits and advertisements forever (especially if the world enters a double dip recession).

Although it would be foolish for Facebook to charge users to access the site (as that would benefit the upcoming Google Me), there are at least a five freemium features they could offer which might help Facebook keep the lights on.

Podcasting On The Go

Sometimes users want to update their status with a voice sound bite instead of via text. While one could always use FriendFeed (a service Facebook bought in 2009) to do this, it would be great if users could embed this directly upon their wall.

Facebook could offer this for users for free (perhaps allowing them to upload 60 seconds max per entry) and charge users who require (or desire) more space.

Podcasting via Facebook could also appeal to mobile users, who may prefer to say it rather than type it via thumbs.

Video Editing Please

Believe it or not, Facebook is the third largest video site in the US, behind only Yahoo and the mighty Google Goliath. Despite their bronze medal, Facebook videos as a whole are rather basic compared to rival services like YouTube.

While it’s great to see Facebook offer a decent YouTube alternative, what users really need is a way to edit their videos without having to load up an iPhone app or desktop software.

Even though a video editing suite would not appeal to professionals, it would appeal to millions of families using the service (as allowing Grandma to easily touch up a video vacation could help draw in even more users).

Themes FTW!!

If there was one thing MySpace fans miss about their former hangout, its the ability to customize their themes. Unfortunately most MySpacers lacked the talent to create elegant themes (to the horror of graphic designers everywhere).

In order to satisfy the “wanna be creative” crowd, Facebook could offer approved themes by third party designers, which users could purchase in order to have their profile “stand out” from the crowd.

Facebook could even mimic Apple’s model and take a 30% cut from whatever the theme developers charged (via Facebook credits of course!).

Are You Photogenic?

Despite the fact that there are many photo editing sites out there, having them pull your Facebook photos, edit them and re-upload them is (more or less) a pain.

While Facebook could simply roll out a freemium photo editing suite, it might be wiser to outsource that feature to third party clients who could help users touch up images without leaving the site.

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Facebook (or a third party) could roll out basic editing features for free, while offering premium services for users desiring to remove the “red eye” from various albums.

Ad Free Zone

Believe it or not there are some users willing to pay Facebook in an attempt to remove the (often) annoying ads next to their social profile (as not everyone wants to see those dating adverts).

However since ads are a very profitable feature for Facebook, the social network could charge a high premium for users wanting to prevent ads displaying next to their profile whenever their friends visit their wall.

Although this feature would probably not appeal to the free loaders, it could help Facebook generate some extra cash every month.

Would You Pay For Facebook Features?

If Facebook offered these features above, would you consider exchanging your hard earned cash for? Or is there another feature not mentioned here that you would consider worth paying for?

If so, feel free to let us know in the comment section below!

(Image Credits: WP Clipart, Apple, Voltshow, Clker.com)

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