Would you pay FB $1 just so you can message someone? I think that is crazy not because they are trying to come up with new ways to generate revenue – good for them – but rather there are easier ways to get hold of someone.
Email them, use LinkedIn, ask for an introduction, call them or even FB message them for FREE! In this day and age it is not difficult to get someones contact details, even their home number and address (although I don’t recommend that approach).
Will be interesting to see how long this lasts. I don’t suspect very long. I would have gone for a LinkedIn approach which has different membership tiers. When you become a certain level depending on your monthly fee payment, you are able to mail other members up to a certain number.
What we do know is that FB as we knew it is changing, with more and more ad’s and videos coming to our feeds and now we are going to be increasingly approached from external sources.
Facebook Inc. FB -3.05% said Thursday it has begun testing a system for users to send messages to people outside their immediate circle of social contacts for a payment of $1, as the company continues to find new ways to capitalize on its popularity.
In a statement posted online, the Menlo Park, Calif.-based social site cited research showing that “imposing a financial cost on the sender may be the most effective way to discourage unwanted messages and facilitate delivery of messages that are relevant and useful.”
Facebook already lets members send messages to those outside their network of contacts, but those messages are routed to an often-overlooked “Other” folder.
This new feature would let users send messages directly to a user’s main “Inbox”—for a small fee.
Each message sent will initially cost $1, though Facebook plans to continue tinkering with prices.
Only individuals would be allowed to send messages using this feature. So a brand such as Coca-Cola KO -0.89% couldn’t send bulk emails to groups of users.
For now, Facebook said it is limiting the feature to a small group of people in the U.S., and capping the number of messages that anyone can receive through this route to one per week.
The latest move comes a few months after Facebook started testing a separate service that enabled users to pay $7 to make their personal posts more visible among contacts on the site.
Facebook, which has garnered one billion monthly active users, is also pursuing a number of online advertising and commerce initiatives as it seeks to bolster investor confidence.
