Facebook and media: Show me the revenue!

After the Facebook announcements yesterday at its 2011 f8 developers conference, I’ve been trying to find the revenue model for the media apps. Will Facebook share revenue? Is this just a traffic driver? This is especially a concern if the audience never has to leave Facebook to read stories. How will these news organisations capture the value from the Facebook audience? I’m not finding many answers.

AdAge has a great story answering some, but not all, of these questions, but the answers should raise alarm bells for news organisations struggling to monetise their digital content. “Stories don’t link out to the publisher and can be read within Facebook.” So, will Facebook be paying for this content? Will news organisations now be counting Facebook impressions in their traffic stats? Will news organisations be able to sell ads against their content in Facebook? If that is the case, then Facebook will obviously want a cut of this.

Revenue models seem either non-existent or not well thought out.

When asked about the revenue model for Social Reader, a Washington Post spokeswoman said, via email, “The focus right now is on getting people to use it.”

What? You’re joking right?! At least the News Corp spokesperson said that there might be some ad support and it would tie into other apps. Clear Channel wouldn’t comment on the revenue model for its iHeartRadio app.

Simply getting eyeballs isn’t enough in 2011, and the lack of detail about how these news organisations plan to capture revenue from these apps to support journalism is very, very worrying.

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