COMMENTARY | Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, his employees and investors are close to taking the company public. The initial stock offering appears to be headed for a $100 billion payoff.
In the spirit of "friendship," I propose Zuckerberg share his spoils with those who are creating the content that made Facebook so compelling to advertisers and marketers: his users.
Instead of having 900 million plus "active users" hound Facebook, I recommend the formation of the Facebook Users Compensation Committee. Acting on behalf of those populating the social networking site with photos of food, parties and other important content, FUCC would negotiate and manage the proper allocation of Facebook stock.
It would be a friendly gesture to those who have dedicated countless hours to keeping the Internet giant in business. I even have a simple formula for how users would receive their allocation each quarter: Take the number of pages accumulated and divide it by 10, then send the incremental stock amount to each person.
It is estimated Facebook has hundreds of files and pages for each of its users. Let's assume the average is 400 pages. That person would initially receive 40 shares. If you're a longtime user, the file could be in the thousands of pages. That would be to your benefit and just reward for all those hours spent on Facebook.
Working together, FUCC and Facebook would have a financial incentive for the user base to expand into the billions. This compensation model creates a bonus to recruit even more friends to openly share every aspect of their lives.
Advertisers and marketers would love to gain access to data that gives them a 24-hour view of everyone in the world. It opens an entire market with the CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, employers and foreign governments that never seem to get enough information on us.
With all those billions of dollars shortly pouring into the coffers of Facebook, friends need to take care of each other, or as the saying goes: share and share alike.
