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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.

9 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: 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".

    3. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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...

  4. 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.

  5. 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?

  6. 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.