With the economy still almost as bad as ever, even places like Facebook are feeling the burn. This has prompted some to say that in lieu of cutbacks, Facebook should change to a subscription model, charging users for extended features. Slate’s Farhad Manjoo explains the theory:

100 million people use Facebook regularly. Judging from some of the folks in my social network, a sizable minority of Facebook users have hundreds of "friends" and check into the site multiple times a day--call them superactive users.

Let's imagine that Facebook became a tiered service. A free plan would limit you to 200 friends, one status update per day, or some other nondraconian combination of restrictions. But for $5 a month, the limits would be lifted.

Certainly, many users would balk; tens of thousands would join Facebook groups to protest the new pay model. Let's assume that 95 percent of users will refuse to pay a dime. That still leaves 5 percent, or 5 million people, to pay $60 a year. That's $300 million in the bank.

Wow, might I just say that this is the worst idea ever? I mean, it’s a really good idea for Facebook, because it would totally work, but a really bad idea for us. What are you going to do, not pay $5 a month and cut out 400 friends from your profile? And when you justify it as “oh, it’s just a cup of coffee,” people would adjust to this new pay scheme far too quickly.

I predict that this easily might happen, and that it won’t create the kind of backlash that it should. Sure people will make Facebook groups called “1,000,000 strong against paying for Facebook,” but it won’t matter. What changes has Facebook ever made that we didn’t follow right along with?