The trouble is that the users (including the privacy conscious users) have to go where their friends are to interact with their friends. And the majority of users are not willing to pay money for more privacy, so the advertising-funded service gets the majority of the users, and the privacy conscious users can then either give up their privacy or lose the ability to interact with their not so privacy conscious friends. And they choose the first option in droves (or there just aren't enough privacy conscious people left), so there is no real market for the alternative.
I mean think about it: It's not like offering a paid service is rocket science. If there was money to be made there, why isn't anyone making a billion dollars offering it? Why aren't you?
Maybe it's an untapped market and no one else has had the vision to serve it. But this is kind of one of those money where your mouth is situations. If you think that market is lucrative enough to be worth chasing, do it. If not, well, apparently no one else does either, so here we are.
The trouble is that the users (including the privacy conscious users) have to go where their friends are to interact with their friends. And the majority of users are not willing to pay money for more privacy, so the advertising-funded service gets the majority of the users, and the privacy conscious users can then either give up their privacy or lose the ability to interact with their not so privacy conscious friends. And they choose the first option in droves (or there just aren't enough privacy conscious people left), so there is no real market for the alternative.
I mean think about it: It's not like offering a paid service is rocket science. If there was money to be made there, why isn't anyone making a billion dollars offering it? Why aren't you?
Maybe it's an untapped market and no one else has had the vision to serve it. But this is kind of one of those money where your mouth is situations. If you think that market is lucrative enough to be worth chasing, do it. If not, well, apparently no one else does either, so here we are.