Personally I don't think there is enough advertising money available regardless of economic conditions to keep this behemoth afloat. I'd love to know what alternatives those clever FB MBAs are cooking up.
How will FB Connect help pay the bills?
Still, you don't think they could sell for $2b right now?
My point about Facebook Connect is that it's the one thing that can "lock them in" as the social network of the internet... the place where everyone has their real profile and shares what they really do on other websites. If leaving facebook means screwing my account on 10 other sites on I use, then I'm not going to leave, even if you do slam ads down my throat.
How to monetize. Well, if I was a website using facebook connect, which we have to assume they'll be thousands, I'd surely pay facebook to serve up meaningful ads that use information I've sent them: eg: "4 of your friends recently visited Hackernews"
Another thing which I haven't seen a good implementation of is showing off what people buy. If I bought something online I wouldn't be against sharing it with my friends if, for example, it was a cool product or on sale. Facebook could make money from that. With FBconnect, services might start doing this, and facebook can get a piece of the action for showing news feed items that boost sales.
By the way, are Facebook's numbers even public? How do you know they're losing money?
http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/07/technology/hempel_threepoint...
"[FB] Revenues for 2008 are expected to be about $275 million this year, according to several sources, and it is still not profitable."
it's common knowledge that none of the recent major "web2.0" players have made any or significant profits.
Those departments, even though they lose money, have value to that company.
With start-ups you can make something profitable, and surely that's preferred because you get your money back sooner, or you can build something that has value to someone else. In the end, you need just need to build something with value.