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You probably enjoy uploading wacky photos of yourself to your Facebook page. Who doesn’t? You’re probably even wild for sharing crazy homemade videos of your brother in law’s incredible talking dog, or those hilarious faces your two-year-old niece makes whenever you give her a lemon to bite into. But would you keep uploading this stuff if you knew that by doing so, you were putting money into the already overstuffed pockets of social media titans like YouTube or Facebook?
Well, you are. If you don’t believe me, go read the terms and conditions that you originally agreed to when you first created your account with whatever social media platform you dig the most. They all pretty much say the same thing: that all content you upload through their network belongs to them and they get to make money from it. Of course, the language they use is a little more eloquent, which consequently makes it far less straightforward and understandable – which is probably the point.
This is how it works: every time you upload content, you’re opening up another opportunity for an ad to be placed right beside your image, or your video, or what-have-you.
If you’re confused about how these folks make money from the content you upload, you’re not alone. I was confused too, until I found a trustworthy source that explained it to me in plain English. This is how it works: every time you upload content, you’re opening up another opportunity for an ad to be placed right beside your image, or your video, or what-have-you. Anytime someone views that uploaded content, an ad from one of Facebook’s innumerable “partners” also appears off to the side. Even though you may not ever click on any of these ads – I know I don’t – there are millions of people who do. And that translates to a whole lot of money in ad revenue for that particular social media company.
When you look at how much money is actually being made, you realize it ain’t exactly chump change. Here’s how 2010 broke down for the “big five” social media behemoths from ad revenue alone.
• Facebook earned $1.86 billion (that’s billion, with a B).
• YouTube earned $945 million.
• MySpace earned $288 million.
• LinkedIn earned $243 million.
• Twitter earned $45 million.
Those numbers are enough to make the frustrated entrepreneur inside of you sit up and take notice. But is there anything that you can do about it? Is there any way that you can get a share of those killer profits? Before you go getting excited about the prospects, the answer is a flat: no. Which might not actually seem very fair to you. But you’ve got to remember one important thing. You’re using these social media sites for free. And if you want them to stop earning revenue off of your uploaded content, they’re going to have to make their money some other way. Like charging you a monthly fee to use their services.
That sudden hush you just heard was the sound of about half a billion people suddenly changing their minds on the issue. What if you’re not just a “regular person,” but someone whose uploaded content is actual intellectual property – like artists, graphic designers, or aspiring filmmakers? Surely this has a greater impact on them because this is their livelihood that’s being used to make ad revenue, right?
To answer that question you have to look at the “free use” issue. Businesses have already seen the inherent value of using social media sites to promote their brands and to bring visibility to their goods and services. So have the aforementioned artsy types who can use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and even MySpace as an invaluable tool to bring them the kind of exposure people in their business would have drooled over 20 years ago.
So what’s the answer? It depends. Artists who loathe the notion of having social media companies make money off their uploaded content will have to do one of two things: learn to live with it, or stop using social media sites altogether. I think you probably know what the smart answer is.
Tags: social media
