Can't Buy Me Love...For Less Than $112.65.

As a bit of a no-brainer, it was recently reported that men spend more than twice the amount women spend on Valentine’s Day: $112.65 per person versus $51.56 per person.

Based on Google's Valentine's Day doodle, however, maybe us men have been going about this whole 'buy your love thing' the wrong way.

I'll let you be the judge.

~p

Where Oh Where Are The Facebook Credits?

Last summer, Warner Brothers offered movie-goers a chance to watch “Harry Potter” and “The Dark Knight” for 30 Credits apiece. Miramax and Paramount countered with film-viewing offers, too.

It was reported as being successful and a good experience by users...and then...that was all.

So, why hasn’t this been leveraged by both companies and Facebook more?

As of last year at this time, Facebook reported the following:

• 10,000 websites integrate with Facebook each day
• More than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook (including over 80 of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and over half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites)
• Over half of the 25 fastest growing Comscore U.S. retail sites use Facebook
• Media sites that adopt the Like button average a greater than 300% increase in referral traffic from Facebook

We also know that Facebook credits generate about $475 million in revenue each year (approximately 10% of their total revenue), mostly from in-site gaming upgrades. With their hand in so many different websites, however, why hasn’t this number increased? The move for Facebook credits to become the ‘currency of the web’ is kind of a no-brainer. 

As Zuck recently wrote in a personal letter to shareholders as Facebook registered for their IPO, "We don't build services in order to make money, we make money in order to build better services."

What better way to make money to build better services than to leverage the vast ecosystem of Facebook integration with a Credits system? Imagine if you could earn Facebook Credits on purchases from your fav retail sites, and also use credits to help pay for those purchases. 

If retailers paid $0.30 on the dollar (the same formal iTunes uses with publishers), and customers got back $0.10 on the dollar when applying credits to a purchase, this would be a win-win-win for Facebook (revenue), retailers (customer loyalty, easy of payment), and customers (ease of payment and discount). 

It would also catapult Facebook’s earnings into serious money-making territory. JP Morgan estimates that global E-commerce revenue will hit $963 billion next year. 

With these facts in mind, if leveraged properly, it is believed by Forbes that Facebook Credits could double every year for the next five years. That number would be almost double the total revenue of Facebook today. 

There is only one reason I can think of as to why this is such a long inevitable progression: Facebook was intentionally waiting to register their IPO so they can unleash credits within the first year to look like a hero to shareholders. 

Whatever the reason, when Zuckerburg finally does capitalize on this opportunity, I for one will be looking for some Credit.

~ p.