Definitely. People are reluctant to buy $1 or $2 mobile apps that would be really useful, even though they would never notice the money was gone. Just because most apps are free. Also, most people lose more than they gain by deleting their facebook or anything else. Tech people tend to care about privacy because of all of the terrible implications and possibilities that come with all your personal info being freely bought and sold, but the vast majority of people will never (at least consciously) suffer any ill effects of government tracking or targeted ads.
I'm curious how the "first year for free" business model works out. I'm guessing smaller companies couldn't survive on that as it's too long to wait until you start getting revenue?
I paid a few dollars for WhatsApp once or twice to keep it working after the first year. It was such a small amount I didn't care. I remember some of my friends freaking out about it though, like they were being tricked.
There may be enough people out there now who wouldn’t mind paying for a social network with the assurance that their personal data isn’t going to be mined and sold to the highest bidder. Definitely wouldn’t happen 15 years ago though, but a lot has changed. These people are probably more valuable to advertisers and if they disappear from Facebook it might cause advertising revenue to seriously dry up.
I'm not sure that model would work for a social network, the costs are an order of magnitude higher. People expect to be able to upload photos and videos with no practical limit, and you need a ton of full-time moderation staff when you get to Facebook's scale.
