Here's a Revenue Model for You

PHUTATORIUS
Yes yes yes, that's great. You can use it to upload pictures and tell people what bands you like. But how is it going to MAKE MONEY?

"Well, the plan is to exploit folks' predilections for narcissism and social posturing to gather all sorts of information about them. Then we'll sell them specially-targeted ads based on that information. When that practice sets off the Privacy Dorks, we'll cave and make the behavioral ads optional. The Privacy Dorks will opt out, but who wants to know what's on THEIR grocery lists, anyway?

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The real trick here is to lure in the spammers. When they arrive, as of necessity they must (this being the Internet, after all), we'll slap a lawsuit on them. We'll sue the bajeezus out of them under the CAN-SPAM Act.

And the court will award us $873 million in damages. Pardon me while I write that out checkbook-style for you: EIGHT HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-THREE MILLION DOLLARS. That's more than twice our projected revenue for the calendar year. And that's just from that one dude in Canada. Tons more where he came from, right?"

Seriously, though: you won't be able to collect $873 million from that dude in Canada. I mean, you'll be lucky to get 873 DOLLARS. Right?

"Nah nah nah nah! I can't hear you! We're in the money! We're in the money! We've got a lot of what it takes . . ."

[fade out]