No loss to Facebook

ISLAMABAD: This is with reference to the vigorous debate in your newspaper on the ban on Facebook and its many consequences. The website’s net worth is around four billion dollars. The estimated cost per Million (eCPM) from Pakistan comes to around 20-30 cents per thousand clicks. However, the eCPM for American traffic is around five dollars per thousand clicks. There are roughly two million users of Facebook in Pakistan out of a total of 400 million users around the world. This means that half a per cent of its users are from Pakistan and their revenue contribution is about a tenth of the same number of users from the US. Hence, it would be safe to assume that by blocking the site, we caused a loss of only 0.05 per cent to Facebook’s revenue.

Further, the publicity that Facebook got because of the controversy in all probability has more than compensated for this loss. Shutting our eyes won’t work, fighting it out with the force of education will.

Published in the Express Tribune, June 6^th, 2010.