The rise and rise of Facebook seems to be the big story here, with the social network now being home to over half a billion active users, including almost half of the UK population!  Obviously the recent privacy concerns and quit campaigns haven’t hurt the site particularly (I wonder if the forthcoming movie will..) but how long do you think Facebook can stay as the planet’s favourite social network?

Outsell picks up on the recent Nielsen blog post Changing Model: A Global Perspective on Paying for Online Content, which investigates whether consumers will be willing to pay for online news content. This study matches previous findings from Forrester and Outsell’s own research, essentially that when it comes to media content consumers seem less willing to pay for news than other types of media.

Such findings lead Outsell to conclude that consumers have been conditioned to spend on particular content at particular price points, and that household budgets are pretty fixed. Would you be prepared to cancel that ESPN TV subscription to pay for access to your local newspaper online? So rather than expecting a change in business models to be the next big thing, Outsell suggests publishers place more focus on “serious product design, user engagement, and the things that delight and differentiate”.

Certainly food for thought, as the recession eases and ad spending looks to be slowly bouncing back will the trend toward paywalls lose some momentum?