Can the Social Web be turned into cash...

So there appear to be 3 models for making cash in the world at this time - a) provide a paid service, b) provide a paid for product and c) provide a paid for place for people to advertise. I'm over simplifying but when it comes to what companies offer - this is probably a pretty clear way to look at things. (Please forgive me for ignoring real estate and natural resources - otherwise known as making money from selling materials and spaces.)

So let's look through the microscope at what's going on out there and see if there are some examples where there might be some examples.

Let's start with Google - are there products per se? Some would argue that Google has a whole bevy of software products. Are they paid for? Not by the average person through traditional means. How about services? Well, certainly the vast number of gmail users would seem to indicate that Google certainly has some services. Are they paid for? Again, not by the average person through traditional means. Alright, so what comes next - well there's the selling of advertising space. No question, hands down, this remains the way that google makes the bulk of it's revenue. Some comments from Google's own Founder's Letter from this past year's annual report reenforce this theme - according to the letter, 1/3rd of Google is currently working on Search and another 1/3rd is working on advertising. Since "Search Advertising" is in point of fact the basis of Google's fast revenue stream - this means that the company get's paid mostly for this. Alright - I may be selling them short a little bit. Google's search engine is a profitable "product" in that numerous companies rely on Google Search as the means by which they search and retrieve data from their own internal sources.

maybe this should be a series of posts...

I'll come back to this later for more companies to consider...