FB needs to charge or change

THE

world learned this week what I figured out a while back: Facebook is not run by people with business management skills.

In a New York Times piece last week, we were told that Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg essentially decided to put profits before platform security during the Russian hacking investigation.

In one scene, COO Sandberg screams, “You threw us under the bus” at Facebook’s security chief, Alex Stamos, after he gave a presentation to its board of directors saying that the company had not yet gotten its arms around the Russian hacking and possibly other issues that compromised its systems.

Business leaders don’t spin — politicians do — and that’s essentially Sandberg’s background: Washington. You can’t be the “adult in the room” and decide not to “lean in” and take responsibility. Investors don’t want spin, they want decisive actions to protect the franchise.

While someone made the good call to buy Instagram for a mere $1 billion, there’s nobody applying business leadership to this rapidly growing monster.

So let me wade into this fray and suggest two possible business decisions the social networking giant could make.

First, Facebook should charge users a nominal $5-a-month fee. You can give seniors a discount so you don’t lose them.

Netflix does, Amazon does, Apple does. It would make Facebook rely less on selling user data.

While this will not totally eliminate nefarious acts on the platform, it does provide a paper trail to track bad actors.

Second, split the company in two and spin off Instagram. It’s probably worth more than the original Facebook platform anyway, and it will stop the corporate contagion from spreading and polluting that category champ.

For Facebook, it’s charge for it and/or split it. There’s no other viable option.