[Dilbert San Diego]

I think he had a big payday when Facebook became publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

But, I too, am confused, as to why Facebook is worth anything as a business. Is it because of pop up ads???

Forgive my ignorance; neither I or anybody I know do Facebook,, so don’t know anything about how they operate.

But have wondered, if it’s a free site to users, how exactly do they make any money?

[plain talk]

But have wondered, if it’s a free site to users, how exactly do they make any money?

They gather personal information, preferences, likes, etc and then aggregate it by demographics, age, gender and sell it.

[Yaelle]

There are ads every 5 seconds. If ads on radio and tv make money, why wouldn’t the ones on Facebook? They sometimes look like content too.

[semimojo]

It's ads. Their current run rate for advertising is over $20B per year.

They aren't just pop-ups and with all the data FB collects about its users the ads can be very targeted.

[Minutemen]

Dilbert, I'm aware of the ads, but personally, I've been using pop-up blockers since Win-98!

Do that many people believe they can only get their little blue pills thru a FaceBook ad? Cheers!

[SamAdams76]

Ad revenue. Very lucrative ad revenue due to the very precise targeting of the ads due to the fact that Facebook knows so much about you.

It's more or less the same model that sent Google into the stratosphere. Do a search for razor blades and see how quickly the ads for Gillette, Ralph's and Dollar Shave Club come up. Click on one of those ads and Google gets paid.

I believe the reason they came up with free email (Gmail) is so that they can mine additional data about you to generate even more targeted ads.