Big Data, Big Opportunities: Revenue Sources of Social Media Services Besides Advertising

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other players in the social media world have been on the rise during the last couple of years. In contrast to their popularity, their underlying business models are vague and often only linked to advertising. In this explorative study we identify new revenue sources for social media service providers besides advertising. Based on three use cases with Facebook, Tencent, and LinkedIn, we identify three possibly fruitful ways to extend existing social media business models. Subsequently, a survey with 301 respondents changes perspectives on the user's willingness to pay in order to identify usage-related differences evoked by cultural and external circumstances. Four derived hypotheses lead the way to avenues of further research especially in terms of Big Data analytics with new e-commerce trends like Facebook's Buy Button.