Facebook charging $1 fee

[Sefket]

SOURCE

I actually see this as a good idea.

Is this where Facebook‘s storied revenue growth will come from? The social media giant is conducting a small test outside the U.S. to

see if it could start charging users $1 to send messages to non-friends. The new policy would allow you to send one paid message a week, with a limit of three a month, to someone outside your social circle.

Facebook is selling this as a service for the sender – it allows you to make sure your message goes to the actual inbox rather than the “other” folder. It’s also selling it as a spam reduction tool, saying that researchers have said that “imposing a financial cost on the sender” may be the most effective way of unclogging inboxes. In an ideal world, both those angles might actually work.

This is a bait and switch, naturally. Every change to a free service has to be. Like promoted posts, this is a formerly free service that Facebook wants to start charging for. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad. Facebook is very different than it was when it first started, and it may be time for it to update its messaging policy. Rival Linkedin has made a boatload of money with a similar system while maintaining effective messages.

I didn’t even know I had an “other” folder, for in my experience, that side of messages is for all intents and purposes, broken.

The devil will be in the details here – there are a lot of ways this could go wrong. It won’t impact the average person that much, but high-profile individuals could easily see their inboxes swamped with paid messages. On the flipside, the 1 message a week limit could severely hamstring Facebook’s utility as a professional tool, though Linkedin has more or less a lock on that market already.

I’m skeptical of nearly everything that Facebook does – it frustrated me back when it first introduced the newsfeed, and hasn’t really impressed me since. But this is the sort of practical move that could generate revenue on the surface rather than through shady and dubious backdoors. It’s a minefield, but everything’s a minefield when you’ve got a billion users. If Facebook can implement this right it might just have a functional service on its hands.

[DeltaPapa]

obviously bullshit

[ORP]

i call bs

[Larry Fisherman]

Stupid.

[Zach]

Dumb lol

[Ikz]

are you new

Sign Up

It’s free and always will be.

Edited December 21, 2012 by Ikz

[Andrew]

i dont even use fb much anymore anyways

[Anthony]

why use facebook when i can post status updates here?

[Dizzy]

why use facebook when i can post status updates here?

Friends u know irl?

[GFUrPixelz]

facebook is gay anyway

[Shivan]

Lol I don't have Facebook .. And I will not be planning to make one

[Tony]

not true

[Marc|Criti]

Lol I don't have Facebook .. And I will not be planning to make one

that social life

[FearMy Def]

nooo

[Shivan]

Lol I don't have Facebook .. And I will not be planning to make one

that social life

Lelele

Edited December 23, 2012 by Shivan