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Facebook Tests the Waters With Paid Perks

Posted by timothy on from the pay-me-in-certified-adulons dept.

CNET reports that Facebook has experimented lately with a small group of users by offering people the chance to promote their own account status messages the old-fashioned way: by paying for them. The author of the linked article asks whether it's inevitable that "Facebook will have to start dinging users in earnest," post-IPO. Facebook still says "It's free and always will be," but that doesn't rule out paying for additional features — that's certainly a model that many game makers had adopted.

30 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. Freemium at its best by manekineko2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So first Facebook's algorithm hides my posts from my friends for reasons known only to Facebook.

    Now Facebook is testing the option so I can pay so that my posts they hid will actually show to my friends.

    In a way, I really hope Facebook goes through with this, maybe it'll be the straw that finally breaks the camels back and we can get a new social network that actually cares about its users.

    1. Re:Freemium at its best by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Just a heads-up. Your post that aren't showing up -- that's because your friends asked facebook to stop showing them. Then when you noticed they were like, "I don't know, why didn't see it? Oh man, facebook is so weird. Hiding stuff for _NO REASON_"

    2. Re:Freemium at its best by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      I have several former coworkers that now work for Facebook. The fact that the vast majority of posts you would find interesting are now hidden is a bug with their new sorting algorithm. They're still working on it. For now, one friend recommended using the old "Most Recent" feature instead of the broken "Top Stories" feature. My feed is 90+% Cityville crap even though I have the game blocked.

      I know how frustrating it is. I posted a story a couple of weeks ago that I was going to be in the hospital for nearly a week for emergency surgery. Not a single person I've talked to since then saw the post. It was depressing thinking no one cared when in reality no one knew.

    3. Re:Freemium at its best by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Umm, no. I don't see things that my wife posts. She'll be sitting at the desk next to mine and tell me she posted some pictures or whatever and there will be nothing in my feed. I can wait a while and refresh the feed and still nothing. If I go to her profile, there they are. I have no idea why this happens. and it happens seemingly at random with only some of her posts. It's hard to check if it happens with everyone, since I only have a few Facebook friends and it's not like I'm regularly checking their profiles to see if they've posted other things I don't see. I'm subscribed to "All Updates".

    4. Re:Freemium at its best by timeOday · · Score: 3, Interesting

      And yet, there is craigslist. No I'm not saying it's an alternative to facebook, I'm pointing out how amazingly user-centered it has remained. In fact "earnest" might even be a better word. Thank you Craig Newmark.

    5. Re:Freemium at its best by Culture20 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It started about a couple years ago, I missed some big announcements from close friends, and found out that FB started limiting the news feed to only certain friends' statuses. There was temporarily an option to expand it to everyone again, but that disappeared more than a year ago to. Now if you're narcissistic enough, you can ensure that your friends see your status message. FB will cease to become a source of communication soon because people like free, but they like free+works better, and there are other free communication methods that don't arbitrarily drop your messages and offer to charge you to resend them.

    6. Re:Freemium at its best by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You could have sent an email to a bunch of people. I hear that works.

    7. Re:Freemium at its best by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Anyone who thinks they are going to start a service to replace facebook without making money their #1 priority is an idiot who will fail the moment they have to open a hundred million $ data center.

      That is only true if the idea is to replace facebook with a facebook clone. That will never happen.

      What could happen is a distributed social network. One of the most common effects of the internet has been disintermediation. The thing is that facebook itself is ripe for disintermediation - it has set itself up as the intermediary for hundreds of millions of people. But we don't need facebook to get between us and our friends.

      I expect to see facebook left in the dustbin of internet history by software that runs mostly on our phones. It won't be much longer until phones will have terabytes of storage and constant high-bandwidth connections - even with cell tower bandwidth at such a premium, most people are within the range of a friendly wifi hotspot for the majority of their day. The need for centralization is practically over with already. You can host your "wall" and your photo albums and whatever other media you want directly on your phone and you'll get 100% of what makes facebook valuable to 99% of its users without all of the pandering to Big Data's stalking addiction.

      All it is going to take is a good quality phone-centric social network app and facebook will shrivel up and blow the way of myspace and geocities.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    8. Re:Freemium at its best by devphaeton · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So first Facebook's algorithm hides my posts from my friends for reasons known only to Facebook.

      Now Facebook is testing the option so I can pay so that my posts they hid will actually show to my friends.

      In a way, I really hope Facebook goes through with this, maybe it'll be the straw that finally breaks the camels back and we can get a new social network that actually cares about its users.

      While I agree that the new features are silly and a thinly veiled attempt at capitalizing upon the public, shall we all remember that when we post things on Facebook, we are voluntarily using a free service on the Internet? At any point we are all free to delete our account, ignore the parts we don't like, or otherwise not participate in it as a social networking site.

      Shit, we may even decide to go outside, into the Big Blue Room and talk to actual people, face to face!

      --


      do() || do_not(); // try();
    9. Re:Freemium at its best by black6host · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I know how frustrating it is. I posted a story a couple of weeks ago that I was going to be in the hospital for nearly a week for emergency surgery. Not a single person I've talked to since then saw the post. It was depressing thinking no one cared when in reality no one knew.

      Sorry you had to go through that. Honestly. But you know what? If I went into the hospital for emergency surgery anyone I wanted to know would know. I don't have a facebook account. And I'd never create one and expect it to act as a tool to disseminate critical information. It was important to you that people knew but you relied on a mechanism that is geared towards monetizing you and if it works for you all the better. If it doesn't, oh well. Not like you can sue them over it.

      I'm not trying to be harsh, and I do feel for you. Next time, use the phone (you had time to post to facebook, all it takes is one phone call to spread the word....)

    10. Re:Freemium at its best by XahXhaX · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Just imagine how bad it must have been before there was a Facebook, and there was no way to let another person know about such important news and emergencies!

    11. Re:Freemium at its best by AngryDeuce · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Remember AOL, Myspace, ICQ, MSN etc, they all had a huge userbase, were seen as invincible and they all more or less crashed when they tried to cash in in a market where they were no longer the leaders in innovation.

      The mob is fickle, brother. Ten years ago Myspace didn't even exist yet, and it hasn't been relevant in years now. C'est la vie...

      Anyone that expects different with Facebook is delusional. I would honestly not be surprised if a full third of the user accounts on Facebook are either abandoned completely or aren't accessed but a few times a month at the most. I don't know what's going to be the dominant social network in 5 years...but I seriously doubt it's going to be Facebook.

    12. Re:Freemium at its best by AngryDeuce · · Score: 4, Funny

      Oh man, but that's so much work, logging into your email account and, uh....look, fuck you buddy. We need to use Facebook! We must use it for everything!!!!! I don't even remember how to dial a phone anymore it's been so long! What are these numbers, and how do you dial someone's Facebook account?!?!! DURRRRRRRRRRR

    13. Re:Freemium at its best by timeOday · · Score: 3, Informative
      Those are interesting stats, and I would never claim running a huge website was cheap or free. But you argued that a large site must place making money as their #1 priority, but that's not consistent with craiglist's website design, business practices, and public statements:

      CEO Jim Buckmaster, who is about to celebrate his 11th year in charge, told the Guardian,"any extra profit accrued is an unintended secondary consequence." The 11th most popular site in the United States and the 37th in the world has only 32 employees. It charges for job advertisements in 18 U.S. cities and $10 for apartment listings in New York as a way to meet expenses. AIM estimated the site's value at $1 billion, citing "untapped" commercial potential.

      They would not have $1BN of untapped potential (i.e. unused ad real estate on their website) if their true motive were some version of "maximize shareholder value."

  2. Who is stalking me? by bartoku · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I bet people would pay $10/day for that feature.
    Who searched for me, who viewed my profile, what part of my profile did they view?
    To bad we are locked in to a proprietary social network that hides such information from the user...

    Yes that would arguably kill the social networking site since people would be to paranoid to stalk...oh wait no it would not.

    1. Re:Who is stalking me? by wmac1 · · Score: 3, Informative

      We have a social network website with about 2 million members and this exact feature (who visited my profile, and hidden visits) bring in 5% of the whole revenues.

      35% comes from advertisement, 5% from other membership fees (enable other features), and remaining from commission of selling products and services on the website.

      The website is ranked 600-700 on alexa and we have 2 other websites with the same size.

  3. Facebook should pay popular users. by elucido · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The best thing Facebook can do is begin paying people to post relevant news articles and popular stories on Facebook.
    They could make the money to pay them from ads, and most people get their news from Facebook.

    We should be paid to use Facebook.

    1. Re:Facebook should pay popular users. by bartoku · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I like this idea!

      Users who generate a lot of page views are rewarded.

      This encourages users to create more and hopefully "better" (in terms of interest to their audience) posts.

      In turn this draws more page views and makes Facebook more money.

      Actually if Facebook was wise they would simply give you a private ranking on your post, how many views a picture or wall post garnered to encourage you to do more.

      Facebook users love collecting things: friends, likes, Farmville items...give them another virtual currency: views!

    2. Re:Facebook should pay popular users. by Nemyst · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Alternatively, it'd cause more Click-the-cow-type games to crop up, because stupid sells.

      Sad but true.

  4. Your amazin Facebook post is lost in the noise... by bartoku · · Score: 5, Insightful

    One can understand Facebook's problem. Too many people use it. Too many posts are being created. Too many people miss most of what's there. Yes, it's just like Twitter.

    If Facebook's layout did not stink this would not be an issue.
    If it looked like Google Reader with my hundreds of friends on the left with a little number of how many items I have not viewed that are new, it would be easy to keep up with everything.

    Instead I get this seemingly random arrangement of things on the main page and it takes me two clicks to even bring up a complete friend list which is arranged in no useful order.

    I cannot wait for the day when we look back on Facebook like we did on proprietary email protocols and instant messaging protocols and have a beautiful selection of clients.
    I am still looking forward to the day when all those services are easily host on servers that are not harvesting the average user's data...

  5. Reminds me of eBay.... by HockeyPuck · · Score: 3, Insightful

    eBay makes money in the form of micro amounts.

    In your item to be sold...

    Want a larger title?
    Multiple colors
    Pictures
    highlighted in the listing...

    All of these cost a few cents extra to get more "eyeballs" to see your listing and then eventually to click on it and hopefully to buy the item(s) you're selling.

    Always wondered why I couldn't format my FB posts with bold/italics or justifications (left/right/center). Now, I can see them saying, "You want bold... that will be $.05."

    Of course it would be really slick to have a setting similar to what email clients have which is to display all email messages, regardless of formatting as "plain text". Thereby getting rid of all the formatting people have paid for and display it in plain text (like it is now).

  6. Re:Hew! by ThePeices · · Score: 4, Insightful

    MyCleanPC is a scam. Please dont feed the trolls.

  7. Forever alone by zill · · Score: 5, Funny

    I was hoping for a paid feature where Facebook doubles your number of friends.

    Then I realized that 0 x 2 = 0.

  8. Re:"You're doing it wrong" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't know about *posts*, however I do know that Facebook does not always show your *likes* to friends. I'm not talking about likes of someone's status where it'd be understandable if your friend couldn't see it because he's not a friend of the friend whose status you liked. I'm talking about your likes of pages or comments on pages or links, where ALL of your friends should be able to see those likes. How do I know that not all of my likes are seen by my friends? Because I created a second facebook account (that I friended) just for the purpose of getting to see EXACTLY what activity of mine my friends see.

  9. I would pay to opt out of being a product by cowtamer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I seriously pay to have true privacy controls, where I could opt out of having my data / posts sold to whomever paid for it, or let me see who's been bidding (and let me choose who gets it).

    I'd also pay to get access to all the data they have on me (what I have deleted, who's viewed my page, etc). This, of course, would not be good for their business model.

    But they would probably take my money and sell my data anyway :)

  10. Re:For the share holders by __aaltlg1547 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There was a time when they were more focused on building their user base than (immediate) profits. They knew the network would only gain financial value when it had enough users to monetize, which it now does.

  11. Haven't used Facebook for 12 weeks. by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 3, Interesting

    a) lacked the time for it
    b) the constant privacy violations and promises to 'never do it again'
    c) several news reports on the very real risks to current and future employment of facebook posts.
    d) at the time, nothing like google circles so I couldn't keep the different parts of my life really separate. Also see b) - similar violations of cross friend discussion privacy in the past. I'm sorry- I just don't want to share every aspect of my beliefs with everyone.
    e) They are thinking of charging us? WE ARE THE PRODUCT. Without US, they are NOTHING.
    f) It was just taking too much time to keep up with "friends" that I really barely knew. I've started living life for real in the time that's been freed up. Seriously- it was something like 1.5 hours a day to keep up with facebook. I use that time to play board games in person, go on dates, take classes, walk, ride a bicycle, exercise.

    I'm back to email, text messages, and personal phone calls. I've made new friends in real life who i see in person and do real activities with.

    Facebook is a virtual experience lacking in reality.

    Final reason I stopped hanging out in facebook... They wanted my personal mobile phone number to play the games. I hear since then, I could now play the games without facebook. Oh yea.. and CONSTANT spam to join "games" and events in "games" which I didn't give a darn about.

    --
    She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
  12. Re:For the share holders by EdIII · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So... in other words... they prepared the pasture... lured in the sheeples... and now it is time for the harvest?

  13. Determined to repeat MySpace's mistakes by hessian · · Score: 4, Interesting

    FacePlant seems determined to repeat the mistakes of MySpace.

    Once you get all those people on the site, you just must turn them into cash cows, instead of taking a decent payout in advertising. The MBAs just insist.

    The result is that soon interacting with the site becomes a pain in the neck and the smart people leave. They are replaced by many, many more people, but we all know that the number of warm bodies is only part of the story.

    When you lose those top echelon users, your site starts to become a virtual tenement. Soon it's a kicking around ground for the lost, like MySpace, Digg, and other dot-com burnouts.

    Good thinking, FacePlant.

    --
    Futurist Traditionalism
  14. sage and report by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    You see the flag there on the lower right of the message?

    Click it.

    "spam"

    Bam, done.