Facebook to "promote" paid user posts
A logo of social networking website Facebook is reflected on the sunglasses of a student on May 14, 2012, in Manila, Philippines. / AFP/Getty Images
NEW YORK Facebook (FB) has long declared that it's "free and always will be." And it still is - unless you want more friends to see what you have to say.
The social media giant is rolling out a feature in the U.S. that lets users pay to promote their posts to friends, just as advertisers do.
Facebook has been testing the service in New Zealand, where it tries out a lot of new features, and has gradually introduced it in more than 20 other countries.
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The company said Wednesday that promoting a post - such as announcing a garage sale, charity drive or big news like an engagement - will bump it higher in your friends' news feeds.
"Every day, news feed delivers your posts to your friends. Sometimes a particular friend might not notice your post, especially if a lot of their friends have been posting recently and your story isn't near the top of their feed," wrote Abhishek Doshi, a software engineer at Facebook, on Facebook's news site.
The company has long declared on its front page that it's "free and always will be." And it still is - unless you want more friends to see what you have to say.
Facebook didn't say how much it will cost to promote the posts, only that it's considering a range of prices as part of the test. On Wednesday, though, some users could see $7 as a cost per each update that they want to promote.
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Also the apps that users use on facebook such as the games and what ever else will have more of a chance to have their in your face advertising going on as well as fan pages you subscribe too like and so on.
Anyone that is in any kind of business on facebook will say they do not see nothing wrong with this because of the simple fact they smell a opportunity to make more money and anyway that facebook can sell their user base to businesses is always a plus for the facebook team.(might as well be a heard of cattle....)
I do not want to sound to negative about it so lets talk about possible upside which this could help non profit organizations or someone with a cause to help others have more chances of being heard which am all for....
BUT I can see this being another tool for politicians corporations and any other type of businesses to use to abuse the user base of facebook.
Their are already plenty of ways to get your friends on facebook to see what you have to say as examples make a event or use the send button to send messages to all your friends fan pages and so on.
Also if all paid news feed posts are going to be at the top of your news feed how is that going to work for the people that have a lot of friends or apps added as it will be possible for apps alone to post in your news feed including what ever you subscribe to on facebook as well.
The point am getting to here is that the facebook team is willing to do whatever to make more money off their user base but with this method did they ever consider a spam factor that will happen in some of the users feeds? will their be a limit to how many posts can be on top? Will a facebook user have a option to choose how many paid post they will see on top? Are people that pay for a post be able to keep paying for the same post to be on top?
At any rate this can make new news into old news really fast if the same post stays on top and in the long run lose user engagement.A news feed is for the purpose to stay up to date and not to be run as a classified ad.