Facebook is worth much less to its users than search and email, but it keeps a larger share of the value
by Cory Doctorow from on (#3R07V)
Economists Erik Brynjolfsson, Felix Eggers and Avinash Gannamaneni have published an NBER paper (Sci-Hub mirror) detailing an experiment where they offered Americans varying sums to give up Facebook, and then used a less-rigorous means to estimate much much Americans valued other kinds of online services: maps, webmail, search, etc. (more")