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Facebook Test Will Let You Message Strangers For $1
Spy Handler writes "According to PC Mag, 'Facebook is testing a feature that will let select users pay $1 to send messages to people with whom they have no connection on the social network. The $1 fee will open a thread with a non-Facebook friend. If that person replies to your note, you won't have to pay again to respond to them.' Facebook explained the test thus: 'Several commentators and researchers have noted 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. This test is designed to address situations where neither social nor algorithmic signals are sufficient. For example, if you want to send a message to someone you heard speak at an event but are not friends with, or if you want to message someone about a job opportunity, you can use this feature to reach their Inbox. For the receiver, this test allows them to hear from people who have an important message to send them.'"
Seems to me that I should be able to let anybody contact me and I can opt in to people being charged a dollar to contact me. I don't want to make long lost friends pay to send me a message but I can see how some people might appreciate this. Also, Facebook isn't doing anything worth $1 to get this money and it's an (in)convenience fee so this money should go to a charity or something, right?
How does Facebook deserve this money?
My work here is dung.
Since you are now selling access to me, why am I not getting a fiscal benefit as a result?
Is this different from Linkedin's paid messages as those are work/career context that has a precedent?
Is this different from Postal mail?
see subject.
Someone copied Bill Gates' 1995 book "The Road Ahead," where he predicted charging fees to the senders.
... as long as that $1 goes to the person being spammed. I expect facebook will pocket it though. In which case it's just pay to spam.
The suggestion was to charge a tenth of a penny per email. For regular folks who email, that works up to less than a penny per day. (No fees for business emails from private or hosted exchange servers, of course.) This would discourage spam emails and mass marketings from public accounts (although it wouldn't stop spam from zombie email accounts on private domains.)
A dollar per message should be enough to discourage irresponsible spamming.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
How does Facebook deserve this money?
Because they say so?
If I can already send message to most people I'm not connected to, as long as they dont have their profile set super secret mode....this does almost nothing. So I can only assume then that the main point of this "feature" is that it WILL go to those super secret ultra private profiles, thus invalidating the settings and desires of said person.
So ya. Spammer paradise.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
... I can send a million messages. Stupid. A million messages is worth $1 or so to me. You would be surprised how FEW respond to my tests. I've spammed every person on a number of dating sites, for instance (as part of my private experiments), and the feedback is pathetic.
$1 for a message is insane, just like the prices for all ads. I don't know how anyone makes a return on any form of ads. It doesn't add up at all.
They don't. Facebook are greedy cunts.
Wrong. Try again. Facebook has always been and should forever remain free, and you should have been able to message everyone regardless of connection in the first place. Stupid.
I don't want to make long lost friends pay to send me a message
They can send you a friend request at no charge.
Seems to me that I should be able to let anybody contact me
I believe that's called making your e-mail address public.
How does Facebook deserve this money?
They're managing to convince people to pay it. Naturally!
They "deserve" it because it is their service and someone is willing to pay.
Seriously, though the word "deserve" doesn't belong in financial discussions where there are willing parties on both ends. I make four times as much as a social worker. Do I "deserve" more than my overworked sister-in-law who works with troubled youth? No. But I do. The fact is that my skill set is valued by the market more than hers. Sad fact of life. Tiger Woods makes eleventy-billion times what I do. For hitting a damn white ball with a stick. does he 'deserve' more than me? Nope. Sad fact of life.
If some idiot is willing to pay $1 to Facebook, then Facebook deserves that $1 and the guy paying it deserves to be $1 poorer.
-- MyLongNickName
As much as I am not a fan of Facebook (or on it at all), they run the hardware and wrote the software. You were the one willing to sign up to be their product and agree to their contract. Any right you had to complain already got clicked away.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Dear Facebook Friend,
Naturally, you will be amply rewarded for your assistance by retaining a percentage of the funds transferred....
For the receiver, this test allows them to hear from people who have an important message to send them.
One of the most important messages that a stranger could send me is "ka-ching." That is, let me set my own price and keep the proceeds.
I realise they make money through ads but I suspect that won't last so they're seemingly looking for anyway to milk people. Sure it'll stop bulk spam but $1 is nothing to get your chance to be a total creep to some strange woman. On the bright side if creeping goes on that should kill FB.
How is providing a service that costs billions of dollars in infra structure not doing anything?
"Several commentators and researchers have noted 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."
Translation
"Money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money."
Give me the option to turn off the receipt of all that are not from my Facebook friends, regardless of how much money Facebook is making off the sending of those messages.
My time is worth more than $1.00.
Let me set the price, FB can take 10%.
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
Facebook main webpage still says "It's free and will remain free"
I hope there's a way to block this. For example, the following $1 message comes to mind:
"Hi, I'm the one who was sent to prison due to your testimony about me repeatedly beating your daughter while she lived with me. I just wanted to let you know that I've been released and am thinking of you. Much love!"
If they are long lost friends, perhaps they should go the normal route and friend you instead.
This is opening a new path of communication and you have no moral ground to stand on to demand that it should be free or non-profit.
Don't like it? Then don't use it.
I'm assuming there will be some sort of bulk discount for businesses.
In Soviet Facebook, stalkers block you!
Before: Facebook keeps your contact information private only allowing people to contact you that you have approved.
Now: Facebook keeps your contact information private only allowing people to contact you that you have approved or have paid us.
Yeah, there is no way that new policy won't be abused.
So am I.
They can send me as many unsolicited messages as they like if I get paid 50c for every one.
That's only fair, I think.
Trust The Computer, The Computer is your friend.
I'd be all for it. .. If I had an option to pay a dollar, and give the original sender a nasty electric shock in reply. :)
Facebook makes two bucks. I'm happy. Everyone's happy!
You don't have to pay facebook anything to "block" these messages. All you have to do is stop logging in to facebook.
So Facebook, you want to be the preeminent social media site, but you want me to pay for every message sent to my non-FB friends? Let me know how that works out for you...
I am not a number - I am a free man!
They do not, of course. It's all about the money. If they truly wanted to punish spammers, it would be a system more like this:
1. You pay $1 to send message to someone with no connection on your social network.
2. If that someone acknowledges that the message as legit (sender may be a long lost friend, or maybe a polite non-spam email), then you get $1 refunded, so it would not have cost you anything. Essentially, you go out on a limb with $1 to reach that person and let that person judge if you had bothered/spammed them.
3. If the recipient does not do anything, or even marks the message as spam, then the sender would lose that $1, and the $1 goes to the recipient, as he is being compensated for having to deal with spammers.
On the surface this announcement sounds like Facebook is providing a beneficial feature to keep strangers from sending you messages which I didn't know was a widespread problem.
I guess it sounds better than Facebook announcing that they are selling access to your inbox for a $1 to solicitors who don't need or can't afford the the high-volume advertising service. I'm sure they will eventually provide volume discounts.
Think about it... who will want or need to pay that dollar to send you a message?
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
So for $1 can I or can I not send random folks goatse?
Because that might just be worth creating a facebook profile for.
$1 per initial message might seem like a deterrent but with a good result set from data mining various sources a company could establish a viable subset of facebook users likely to be swayed by subsequent promotional offers. Just takes a hook to gather a response from the first message so that additional messages can be sent free, like - respond to this so that your name is entered into a free draw to win Product X. If it's well targeted it'll pay for itself in the long term.
I expect spammers to start using stolen credit cards to send spam. In the end it will cost the CC owners and their banks money while FB most likely gets to keep the money. Depends if the banks force a charge back or not. Sometimes they do and sometimes they write it off and wait fro the government to give them money.
Dear Facebook,
I love this idea. I don't mind you selling the ability to contact me at all; don't listen to these other internet clowns. Now, I can't guarantee I'll read each and every message, but I will look at their subject lines. A glance, that's all I can promise. Is this okay? Great. Great. I am loving this. Will you deposit the $1 into my bank account every time I get a message, or once a month like eBay does?
I cannot think of a way that this couldn't work out well for me.
-Dan
EXACTLY
Asking people to think is like asking them to buy you a new car
I wish email were like that.
Pay me to read your spam FTW!
How does Facebook deserve this money?
Because for some reason, they are the only ones who've been able to build up a lasting social network. They certainly weren't the only ones to try, or even the first ones, but somehow they succeeded in a field full of competition.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Who would be willing to pay $1 to send an unsolicited message? How about $10K to send 10,000 messages? It sounds like Facebook is trying to develop a new marketing channel.
'Several researchers have noted that imposing a financial cost on the sender may be the most effective way to raise Facebook's wallowing stock price'
There, fixed that for them.
Just another day in Paradise
so basically instead of blocking spam they are just forcing these people to do targeted advertising. With all the information advertisers have on users this should be no problem
How does Facebook deserve this money?
If you stay on Facebook, you implicitly acknowledge that they do, because you still judge the overall value of their service to be positive despite this added "inconvenience".
A 25% cut out of the 50 million dollars their late father (who was killed by his enemies) left for them.
It's hard to pay $1 if your FB account is under a fake name. One more way to pressure FBers to use a real name.
Yes, how dare they try to monetize their free-to-use website.
They "deserve" it because it is their service and someone is willing to pay.
So if someone sends a helpful message to strangers offering to lengthen their pelvic protrusions, or induce mammary hyperplasia, Facebook gets laid... er paid? Very sound business strategy, I should say.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
It's about Instagram, but applies too. Living in a walled garden is nice until the gardener wakes up drunk and want to make changes.
People can reply to your public wall posts, see contacts on your profile that you make public, the whole thing is a bit stupid really. Then again, Facebook is not known for its sound logic.
if facebook is making $1 off of my inconvenience, facebook should pay me at least .50c of that money. They're basically sanctioning spam as long as the charge rates are high.
I had a former co-worker a few years back that was looking for a new job. I found the perfect job for him and sent it to him via facebook.
Facebook gave me the ability to find his contact information via the town he was living in, his name, his profile picture, and some mutual friends. I was then able to start a conversation with him and have a few messages back and forth. Neither of us wanted the relationship to move beyond a few polite messages, and I probably would not have gone to the inconvenience of paying a dollar through facebook just to give him a job link that he may not have been interested in.
Facebook provides a convenient way for me to communicate with friends, family, and strangers spread across North America. As soon as this service becomes less convenient due to fees or advertising, I imagine that we will all migrate over to the next big thing. I had hoped that G+ was it, but apparently isn't.
I dont know about it being opt in, but you can turn it off:
http://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674
Saying "deserve" doesn't belong in business discussions is the greedy coward's way out of having morals and ethics.
If in fact i decide that the person is worth talking to i might decide to "wave" my cut but How Much of that $1 do i get???
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Seems to me that I should be able to let anybody contact me
I believe that's called making your e-mail address public.
In fact, part of this change is that Facebook will no longer let you share your contact info with only people who already know someone you've friended. More and more Facebook is dropping the "social" and becoming just another personal web page host site. Welcome back Geocities!
One more reason I'm glad I got rid of my account. Facebook, your time is nigh.
Here you go!
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
Nanny states produce that kind of mindset on their population. As many things become rights and then entitlements following a true (or fallacious) group benefit as justification, it logically follows (to the so entitled) that compensations in any willing two party commercial exchange (like jobs) should as well, because people start thinking that every exchange should follow a societal/group benefit value like the ones they customarily receive, instead of just requiring the plain willingness from both parties.
Tough luck. Commercial transactions with willing parties are only dependent on what the two parties are willing to exchange. And that regardless of the societal/group value of the goods exchanged.
I suspect this feature will be used mostly by advertisers. If $10,000 gets you 10,000 messages to strangers who will be notified of it and probably read at least part of the message, that is a pretty good deal. I doubt most people will bother with it, preferring to just send a friend request. This set up is ideal for mass spam campaigns.
To hear from anyone that I don't know on FB. I totally lock down my account, nobody but me can post on my page, only friends can see posts, etc.
Easy, you do it the old way. You send a friend request first and if they accept, you two can message all you want for free. Your long-lost buddy can go and send you a friend request first.
This service is only for two random people who aren't on each other's friend lists to message each other.
For someone like me, it's probably a way to break through the friend barrier - I don't accept friend requests willy-nilly, everyone on it has to be someone I know personally face to face. But there are people there who I haven't decided if I wanted them on as well and have stayed on my friend request list in perpetuity (usually people I don't know as well).
Opting out is more like what we have with email today - spammers just shoving crap down your inbox, except in this case, it's your facebook inbox. All facebook is proposing is that if you want to do that, you pay a "stamp" of $1 so you don't try to spam the nearly billion members with crap.
One, now Facebook can get their hands on your credit card info. I guess they're just trying to make themselves profitable after the failed shares move. I just hope people will remember to deauthorize Facebook from buying slurpies and selling their detes without their consent. Secondly, if this was just a deterrent to spam & digital white noise, they would refund you that dollar once you connect with the person. If nothing, it will save on non-existent congestion for FB.
um maybe because it's their network that they created, and they can do whatever they want with it? If you don't like it, don't use it.
I am honestly surprised the recipient doesn't get a cut of this. And it would certainly lead to some interesting new spam magnet strategies; perhaps you could entice paid spam by spec'ing out options on a new Lexus at their website, for example.
3. Charge the sender 2$, if it's a spam then FaceBook gets 1$ and the recipient gets 1$. It's lose-win-win, the perfect combination.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
This is a falsehood. What somebody is willing to do depends mainly on their situation. Sometimes the situation itself can and should be changed.
How does Facebook deserve this money?
Because they say so?
Duh, it is because they offer a simple, efficient, inexpensive way to exchange information with anybody in the world in a safe environment. And... umm... oh... At least it is simple!
... attach a message to a friend request anyways?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
1) Get a facebook app on the service that... ... posts to N "holding" accounts"... ... which message back (negating the $1 fee) ... ... whose message gets eaten by the app.
2)
3)
4)
you then have N accounts you can sell to spammers, with no charges leveled due to previous communication. The person who tried the app doesn't get clued in because of the lack of charges and lack of messages.
Mind, this is being posited by someone entirely ignorant of the facebook environment. Maybe it can't be done. Would you bet on it?
Of course, strategy two is "grab someone's facebook account and spam to their entire list" ala "open this attachment for a big surprise!"
Yes, how dare they try to monetize their free-to-use website.
"Free" != no money exchanged.
Just because there's no overt monetary exchange does not mean it is a "free-to-use" website, but rather that your understanding of the word "free" is severely lacking.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
2. If that someone acknowledges that the message as legit (sender may be a long lost friend, or maybe a polite non-spam email), then you get $1 refunded, so it would not have cost you anything.
Facebook? Returning money to users???
Thanks for the hearty chuckle!
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
It isn't even so much as they deserve anything. They are offering a service that lets you message people you are not friends with. Now, they could offer that service for free, but that would allow for all kinds of abuse and would result in their service being flooded with spam. The idea is to set a price point high enough that makes the ROI too low for spammers, yet keep the price low enough that people are still willing to use the service. Since it is their service and they have to impose a fine on valid users to prevent the service from being abused the fee is theirs to collect. It would be nice if they were to use the money to support a charity or reduce advertising on their page, but it is their money to spend how they want.
3. Charge the sender 2$, if it's a spam then FaceBook gets 1$ and the recipient gets 1$. It's lose-win-win, the perfect combination.
Not for Facebook.
According to what passes for business ethics these days, the only way it's a win for Facebook is if they get both dollars.
No Refunds.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
a service that costs billions of dollars in infra structure
[citation needed]
This isn't health care we're talking about.
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
Facebook deserves this money, because they went out and got 900M+ users to sign up for their service. Just the same as NBC deserves advertising dollars because they get people to tune into the television shows they produce.
Why would you think that Facebook is any different? They aren't in the "we run this massive no-cost website for people to shoot the shit on for fun" business. They are in the advertising business.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I am all for users getting a cut. but I am unsure if I would give FB my bank account or credit card details, would you?
"Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it."
- Syrus, Publilius
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yet another reason I will not join Facebook. Seems they really thought out their revenue model before going public...
There are many situations that two parties may agree upon, to the detriment of others or society.
I believe in fiscal conservatism, but keep this point in mind. The willingness of two parties to submit to a contract is not a free check to do whatever they want.
(That's a general thought. In this case, the only "detriment" is to a person taking advantage of a free service, a person who is free to stop using the service. So I agree with you.)
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
The irony is, that Suckerberg announced that email was dead.
That $1 is just for the general riff-raff.
Spammers buy in bulk and get much better rates.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Long lost friends wouldn't have to - they'd ask to be your friend first. Once they're your friend, you don't have to pay. This is for when you want to message people you actually aren't friends with.
Am I the only one who misread that as "Facebook will let you massage strangers for $1"?
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
They provide their users with a service free of charge. How is that not free?
That the service they provide is to sell your details to advertisers is beside the point... from the users' perspective, they do not pay for the service, therefore it is free.
Yes, if someone wants to annoy people, its going to cost them. This sounds to me like the old idea of fighting spam with "email postage", except.... there is only one provider, who gets all the money, in this scenario.
Likely, $1 per person is high enough to not be worth it. If you get 1 response in 100, then you need to take in $100 on average from each response just to break even on facebook fees. That alone is going to kill the vast majority of this crap. Likely more targeted campaigns, by people with much higher profit margins (like head hunters who can both be highly targeted and make obscene profits from placement)
What bothers me is the idea of having to pay $1 to find out if the person who sent me a friend request is someone that I actually know but don't recognize, or a totally random person/spammer etc.
If there is an exception for messaging people who have sent you a friend request (or sending a message with a friend request) I would have little issue with this. If not, then it bugs the hell out of me. In any case, its facebooks perogative if they want to convince me to go elsewhere.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I want to set my own price. Facebook can take their usual 30% cut.
So what if people seem to want to message me and are willing to pay for it. At least Apple lets me keep a small percentage of the money they make on giving someone a copy of a song I have for sale on iTunes. Facebook wants 100% of the profits for themselves? I don't see this business model work if they aren't paying most of the money to the people receiving the messages.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
They're basically sanctioning spam as long as the charge rates are high.
Is the United States Postal Service evil for doing the same thing?
...forcing people to watch "Never Gonna Give You Up" before allowing them to type/send the message. Almost no incremental cost to FB and I'm sure it will discourage unwanted messages.
> my overworked sister-in-law who works with troubled youth?
> Tiger Woods makes eleventy-billion times what I do.
So someone who helps society the most gets paid the least,
and someone who contributes nothing of lasting value get paid the most ??
Methinks societies priorities are pretty fucked up.
Look! A shark! With a friggin' laser! And... oh shit... it looks like Facebook is about to jump over it, considering first the Instagram fiasco and now this.
Zuckenberg sold Facebook at just the right time. Smart kid, he.
Free Martian Whores!
Which is basically free.
If you aren't currently in college, you have to buy a mobile phone that can receive texts in order to verify your account.
If you have a computer or regular access to one and an interest in Facebook, chances are you also already have a cell phone or could easily get a lousy prepaid for a tenner. There are plenty of concerns one can have with Facebook, but this really is not one of them.
The really interesting question is this:
Who pockets the $1?
Facebook? Or the recipient?
There is no rational reason Facebook should pocket the money as for them, the message is no different than any of the other billion messages they deliver every day.
For the recipient, however, this is a change. And getting a buck is at least a small compensation for having to deal with a potential spam message. It is, in fact, the only rational advantage of this change for the recipient, given that if you want to hear from people, you have plenty of options of giving them a website, e-mail address, etc. etc.
If FB pockets the money, you know this is just a grab for money.
The anti-spam concept of delivery costs (which is at least 15 years old) is intrinsically tied to the recipient receiving the money.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
They provide their users with a service free of charge. How is that not free?
They are providing users with a service in exchange for the users providing them with content they can monetize. That's not free by any definition.
That the service they provide is to sell your details to advertisers is beside the point...
No, actually, that's exactly the point.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
"I don't want to make long lost friends..."
Long lost friends are lost long for a reason.
How does Facebook deserve this money?
It's not a matter of deserving or not deserving, it's a matter of people willing to give them their money.
Plain and simple. This will be used for unstoppable spam. A dollar per impression seems steep, but there it depends on the price of the item, your financial status, how susceptible you are to marketing, and what the chances are you'll actually buy. And Facebook knows all of that information. Because they're Facebook. They'll take advertisers money to get the market data, then take more to transmit the message in a "personal" way right to your inbox. So this service will not be used to send urgent messages or anything like that. It will be a direct spam feed to your inbox.
Whatever happened to the little box that you could add a note to when you sent a friend request? Seems like that would accomplish the same thing. Was there a reason they took that away other than to charge for it now?
...Facebook expects their share price to land. One dollar.
Now imagine THAT but you're a corporation.
How does Facebook deserve this money?
They don't "deserve" it, they're a for-profit corporation with stockholders, they'll do anything and everything they can get away with to make as much profit as possible, and they don't give a damn if it's right or wrong, or if the userbase likes it or not.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Anyone that tags me in a photo that doesn't have my face should pay. Put that technology into good use.
Now they do everything in their power to discourage networking. They should just remove the people you may know feature. You're likely to get your account locked down if you try it. Basically all you're supposed to do is tend to your small garden of friends you meet in RL and thats it in which case its better to pick up the phone anyway.
How is providing a service that costs billions of dollars in infra structure not doing anything?
There is plenty of useless but expensive services provided by astrologers, priests, some book writers...
Facebook is selling a way to directly inconvenience me for their profit without my approval.
They've probably realized that their site has turned into crap reaction pictures and link spam (omg here are links to 14 youtube songs!) and holds much less value than it used to - except for finding people and their contact into. So in desperation they're grasping at that.
Did you also forget a few months ago when they went through and forcibly changed everyone's default contact email to @fb.com? That's no attaboy, that's abusing your customers.
How that's at all related to the failure of an idealistic business venture is beyond me.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
Might as well use a car analogy for how poorly that worked.
NBC does sell advertising. So does FB. Adds everywhere. Extremely common business model.
NBC didn't force your default email address on a social network to their domain and then 6 months later start selling advertisers a way to directly bypass all spam/filter/etc controls you have in place.
If FB is smart, this will be killed off quickly (hence the 'limited test' to gauge public reaction) or it will be another nail in the coffin.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
Yep. If implemented it will simply lead to much greater add-friend spam.
Then FB locks that down and starts some type of charge model off that.
Then somewhere along the way another website turns FB into what myspace is today...and we move on.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
By that rationale, the entire Internet isn't free to use because you need to buy hardware and an Internet connection to view it.
Google requires two things: web terminal hardware (such as a PC) and an Internet connection. Both of these can be used for no charge by public library patrons. Facebook has begun to require four things: web terminal hardware, an Internet connection, cell phone hardware, and a cell phone connection. Accounts cannot be verified with the library's phone.
It's either new or (like Google), just another means to verifying users of their free services.
I think it was introduced over the course of the past year or so, based on my Google searches about the subject.
how is this any different than the postal service, which charges senders and recipients do not receive anything except what is being sent?
Tough luck. Commercial transactions with willing parties are only dependent on what the two parties are willing to exchange. And that regardless of the societal/group value of the goods exchanged.
But I, as the recipient of these messages, am not a willing party. If I were, then there would be an option where I could choose to opt-in or opt-out.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Looks like they stole this guy's idea: http://adreama.blogspot.com/2012/09/pay-to-communicate-to.html
They do stuff like this and it works because many people have to use linkedin. I will be interested to see what happens when facebook users face the same issue. I personally doubt they will pay the dollar.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Agreed. I bet you that sooner or later they'll come out with the option to pay some fee to be able to see who's been searching/looking at your profile. I know it's been claimed that there's no way to do this, but I'm having trouble believing that, and I'd be willing to bet that a lot of people would indeed pay for this.
Seems to me that I should be able to let anybody contact me and I can opt in to people being charged a dollar to contact me. I don't want to make long lost friends pay to send me a message but I can see how some people might appreciate this. Also, Facebook isn't doing anything worth $1 to get this money and it's an (in)convenience fee so this money should go to a charity.
Or, let the recipient decide wether FB should refund the fees if the message is useful. If not, the fee stands.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I'd be willing to let anyone contact me and pay me a $1 to do so. Screw the middle man!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
So, let's say that a lot of facebook users are so ticked off at a company that they organize a campaign to spam the owner. The owner suddenly has hundreds of thousands or millions of facebook communications, all costing $1 to each sender. And yes, this can and has been done with postal mail, but it's a lot more likely to happen if it's a click of a button away.
In fact, I suggest we all write to Mark Zuckerberg right now and complain...
This is opening a new path of communication
Sure. Pay Facebook a dollar instead of using one of the 18 other communication channels available for contacting me right now at this very moment in time?
Let alone the ones that would take a couple of days.
What you really want is:
"This person agreed to pay you $1 to receive this message. Do you wish to:
1.) Make them pay, and report this message as spam.
2.) Make them pay, and ignore the message.
3.) Make them pay, and respond to the message.
4.) Not make them pay, but ignore the message.
5.) Not make them pay, and respond to the message."
Options 3 and 4 would probably be optional, but would still be useful. If the message is simply ignored, I'm not sure if #2 or #4 should be the default. I can see arguments for each.
The idea is that if the message is legitimate, the receiver will probably NOT make the sender pay. However, real spammers will be paying every time.
Spam only works because the cost of delivery is so marginal (frequently non-existent if they're using compromised machines to do the mailing) - it doesn't matter if you only get one sucker in a million emails, since those million emails didn't cost you anything. If they cost you a million dollars though, it ceases being profitable.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
ummm, because it's they're platform? If you don't like that, then sign off and see how many long lost friends find you by email.
Really, how can you have a free profile on the website of a publicly traded company and ask them to justify them attempting to get revenue from you? That's like your boss asking you why you deserve to be paid.
Farmers provide cows with food and shelter for free.
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That the service they provide is to sell your details to advertisers is beside the point... from the users' perspective, they do not pay for the service, therefore it is free.
It's not beside the point. From this users perspective, that is not free at all. The price just isn't money.
I'm assuming there will be some sort of bulk discount for businesses.
Perhaps, but I'm guessing that researching who gets your $1/message ad campaign would permit those businesses to "query" the market and so they only pay for results of that filter (ie, market of 1Billion accounts, filter by age/gender/marital-status/income/location to get a good 1M), then pay $1M to send a non-opt-out-able advertisement to those highly targeted individuals. The ability to query that data may also be available at a cost to businesses.
If Facebook allows advertisers to abuse this, then it's utility (and Facebook's overall value proposition to their users) will be diminished. Up to a certain point, it will be completely tolerated by their userbase (what are they going to do - go to another social network?!) and eventually it will become "the way things work"... people might reminisce about the ad-free FB days, etc.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
They provide their users with a service free of charge. How is that not free?
If you aren't currently in college, you have to buy a mobile phone that can receive texts in order to verify your account. I've read about cases where a user ends up locked out of an account entirely until he can verify a mobile phone number.
You can pick up a TracFone for $10 pretty much anywhere to do this. It comes with 10 minutes of time, which is plenty enough. But I don't think this makes Facebook not free, regardless.
Well you gave them the right to abuse this so they are taking it, isn't that economics 101? If you want to let anybody contact you, just publish your email adress on a publicly searchable webpage next to your name and picture.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
But in the real world when you people hear this you start trying to convince me why it's a great service and that I should sign-up.
But in the real world corporations ask you to pay for all manner of services, some of which don't even cost the companies much. It is what corporations do, they offer services, and sometimes they ask you to pay for them.
If you don't like it, you are supposed to vote with your money and take your business elsewhere. That has nothing to do with fanboys and blind crushes, that is just how capitalism works.
this money should go to a charity or something, right?
haha. you know what a corporation is right? it's only purpose is to make money for the share holders. nothing else. charity only happens when the board decides that the charity will indirectly increase profits.
How does Facebook deserve this money?
oh i don't know. maybe because they wrote the software, own the hardware, and otherwise own all resources used to run facebook? they definitely deserve money over anyone else. like any other product, you can decide to pay it or not.
So if someone sends a helpful message to strangers offering to lengthen their pelvic protrusions, or induce mammary hyperplasia, Facebook gets laid... er paid? Very sound business strategy, I should say.
Yes, you do know many corporations ALREADY do this? They pay facebook to send messages.
But really the point is, that person is NOT going to pay $1 to send you a message to lengthen anything. Because it isn't worth it to the spammer than.
One of the biggest proposals to stop spam in email, is to charge a small nominal fee to send a single email message. The small fee is generally a penny or less. And Facebook wants to charge $1. Few spammers will spend that kind of money.
sorry ... due to copyright laws, a citation cannot be provided ;-)
They are providing users with a service in exchange for the users providing them with content they can monetize. That's not free by any definition.
well, it's free by the definition of free understood by almost everyone in the world. i always get a chuckle over the inevitable post like this.
everyone, EVERYONE understands how free of charge services and advertising work. you have not stumbled upon some great insight here. nobody thinks facebook magically pulls enough money out of its butt to run servers and software to support billions of users worldwide. WE GET IT. when we say "free", we mean "free of charge". just mentally make that translation whenever you read "free".
If I were, then there would be an option where I could choose to opt-in or opt-out.
you opt-out by not using facebook.
that comment just strengthens the OPs statements. facebook isn't an entitlement. it's a commercial service that you can choose to use, or not. you don't need it to live or even need it to be comfortable in life.
This is a falsehood. What somebody is willing to do depends mainly on their situation. Sometimes the situation itself can and should be changed.
and those situations are almost always ones in which someone is being harmed physically or financially. but here, we have a free of charge online service that has become ever so slightly less convenient to use, because you may receive spam occasionally from those willing to pay $1.
Actually, the FB users deserve a cut because they are the only reason FB is profitable.
your cut is using facebook free of charge.
i'm curious why you are drawing the line here. facebook has been reaping profits for quite some time now. how come you didn't start screaming sooner that they should pay you? do you yell at the newspaper when you read it, that they are not paying you? do you yell at the TV when you see a commercial? do you yell out the window of your car when you drive by a billboard?
how is it coveting or stealing to want the money to go to charity? i agree that they have no obligation to give to charity or to the user, and i do think that they are providing a valid service, but i still wouldn't call such a desire covetous or thieving.
never mind that i'm an atheist, so those commandments don't hold absolute weight anyway; and that zuckerberg himself seems pretty damned covetous in many ways and that doesn't seem to be a problem.
i'm just wondering, and i think it's vaguely disturbing that moral judgement at all that isn't purely profitable is called "stealing." apart from that, i agree with the substance of your post completely.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
messages are pretty easy to ignore. I feel guilty ignoring invites. This will just make it so that spammers will send these messages using invites instead.
How does Facebook deserve this money?
Because it's their system? Their software and their data running on their servers? Because when you signed up, you agreed to their terms and conditions (which undoubtedly allow them to do this, in some fuzzy legal way)?
Any other reasons?
Welcome back Geocities!
With the big difference that Geocities actually let you set up your own web page. As in, you got iirc 5 MB of disk space, and a URL. That's what they gave you. And with that you could <blink>set up your own web site!</blink>
Lots of crap. But some really cool stuff appeared, too.
Damn, suddenly I'm feeling old :-)
They can send you a friend request at no charge.
Of course, they can't actually explain where they met you and why they want to be friends anymore without paying Facebook money to allow you to message them. Facebook removed messages from friends requests.
Also, in many cases people will not be able to send someone a friend request at no charge. I just visited Facebook and they pestered me to update my privacy options with a really obnoxious pop-up. The privacy options they're encouraging me to lock down are the people who can send me friend requests (from anyone to only friends of friends) and who can send me messages without paying them money (from friends and others I may know to only friends). They're not trying to get me to change anything that might reduce their ability to profit from this, such as who can look me up on Facebook, just the options that would force more people to pay them money in order to contact me.
Oh, how I wish. https://joindiaspora.com/
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Reply. No money is charged. What's the problem?
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch