Want to contact a stranger on Facebook? Pay $1

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/social-media/Want-to-contact-a-stranger-on-Facebook-Pay-1/articleshow/17701047.cms

by husayn • 14 years ago

41 48 14 years ago

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

pbateman3• 14 years ago

Interesting idea but I suspect that the people who would be most willing to pay to contact would also be the least desirable to be contacted by.

swapnilt• 14 years ago

Not necessarily. This is very useful for (atleast) business professionals. Linkedin doesn't provide emails. The only way I can send an 'Inmail' to a person is to upgrade my account. Paying $1 to send a message is a much better option.

pbateman3• 14 years ago

Sure. But do you really want to be contacted by "business professionals" on a site that was supposedly about staying in touch with friends?

nmridul• 14 years ago

There should be a Do-Not-Contact registry. Else, another reason to close your Facebook account as you will be flooded with Spammy mails.

forrestkyle• 14 years ago

Facebook is free, and always will be. Unless you want to use it.

arjunb• 14 years ago

A more complex but potentially fairer variation of this idea is to create an ecosystem where each sender posts a bond when delivering a message to an unknown recipient. If the recipient finds the message abusive/spammy, they could flag it as such and claim the bond, otherwise the message is received without a cost to the sender.

niggler3• 14 years ago

Facebook is looking to make money off of this. Your proposal results in 0 profit for facebook.

EDIT: to the downvoter -- explain how the $1 proposal doesn't have a profit motive.

ximeng2• 14 years ago

Didn't downvote, but they could just as well take 20% of the bond as a fee.

Facebook could also charge $1 and give 50c to the user for receiving the message rather than keeping the whole dollar.

visarga2• 14 years ago

> In a statement posted on Facebook, the website said that it is making several changes to efficiently deliver messages that Facebook users get.

Efficiently deliver messages? What a load of BS. How more efficient can it be than free, instantaneous and in the convenience of the recipient's pocket?

Instead, they should say, they are holding back on all other communication and putting a premium on these paid messaged that only go normally, as they should.

It's the "net neutrality" thing, only this time it's "message neutrality" that we need.

purplelobster• 14 years ago

Yes, and I absolutely love the BS from Facebook about "connecting you with things you care about". I wonder if Zuckerberg and co really believe in their "world changing" mission. No, Facebook, there is nothing special about you, you were the first to make a slightly compelling social network (congratulations), and now we're stuck with you because of the network effect. There's nothing more to it than that.

niggler3• 14 years ago

The sad part is that people are just realizing this. This should have been obvious from day 1.

borlak• 14 years ago

so, spam.

transitionality• 14 years ago

TL;DR: Despite all the technical solutions in place to address the problem, spammers still make a lot of money, so Facebook now wants its cut.

xoail• 14 years ago

I doubt this. And also it's source. IndiaTimes is known for it's ridiculous articles that only make people get paranoid on false rumors. A company like facebook will never do such a thing. Although they allowing brands to send messages to followers is a total different thing.

pitchups• 14 years ago

It appears to be true, as other websites confirm it. Here is the story on Cnet : http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57560256-93/facebook-tests-...

cdh• 14 years ago

Also, details from Facebook itself: http://newsroom.fb.com/News/558/Update-to-Messaging-and-a-Te...

Maxious• 14 years ago

It's on the official blog, albeit below the fold http://newsroom.fb.com/News/558/Update-to-Messaging-and-a-Te...

> Today we’re starting a small experiment to test the usefulness of economic signals to determine relevance. This test will give a small number of people the option to pay to have a message routed to the Inbox rather than the Other folder of a recipient that they are not connected with.

> This message routing feature is only for personal messages between individuals in the U.S. In this test, the number of messages a person can have routed from their Other folder to their Inbox will be limited to a maximum of one per week.

sakopov• 14 years ago

From what i read elsewhere, the message delivery is free. However, if you recipient is not a friend, you message will end up in their "Other" folder. By paying $1, you'll land in their inbox.

sixQuarks4• 14 years ago

forget about your personal preferences for a second and think about this from a marketing perspective. This could be huge for Facebook.

Marketers dream for this type of targeting. Now, instead of an ad that people ignore, you could get a message delivered directly to these people. I, for one, would gladly pay $1 per targeted delivery of message.

If the system works as elegantly as Google Adwords, this will be big. It could go either way though. 1) users revolt against this and it flops, or 2) users actually like the messages from high bidders because it targets them especially well.

Will be exciting to see which way it turns out

citricsquid2• 14 years ago

There was a problem last year when the "other" folder was implemented, you'd get important messages that were completely missed (many people I know missed things that genuinely mattered) and Facebook needs a way to get around this problem. A small arbitrary fee is a perfect solution.

If Facebook wanted to allow marketers to message users directly why wouldn't they build a system for it? I can't see how this is an attempt to make revenue... it would be an awful decision. How would a marketer even know who to target?

sixQuarks4• 14 years ago

what do you mean how would a marketer know who to target? Facebook is the wet-dream of marketers. They have so much info on everyone - what are your likes, what school did you go to, when you got engaged, married, divorced, etc.

philip1209• 14 years ago

I wonder what would happen if Facebook attacked micropayments. If they could replicate the iTunes model, e.g. "Pay with Facebook" for applications, in-store purchasing, etc. then the cost of acquisition combined with lifetime value of the customer could be quite precise.

sixQuarks4• 14 years ago

I think what will end up happening eventually is that the price of using Facebook will be 1 message delivered to you each day from a targeted company.

Advertisers will bid against each other for that coveted message each day, and Facebook will figure out how to maximize bids. For example, even celebrities will be targeted, so companies may end up paying $10,000 per message for them, while a typical person may be $1-$5, or something like that.

adrr2• 14 years ago

No advertiser is going to pay $5 or even $1 to send a message to anyone.

unsquare2• 14 years ago

They already pay that much for interest-based targeted ads.

ashray• 14 years ago

That really depends on the kind of product you're pushing. If each conversion for you is worth $100,000 and your chances of converting are 1/10,000 it would still be VERY worth it ;)

vidyesh• 14 years ago

Its actually better for the advertiser to pay for this service. Instead of building a email list for mailing/spamming they now get targeted customer/user with their attention ( as it would land in their inbox) even without the user approving it. Fancy that!

The idea of opt-ins/opt-outs from newsletter/product emails/updates would diminish if this goes through and everyone starts using facebook again.

sixQuarks4• 14 years ago

Are you kidding? Some keywords on Google Adwords go for $100+ per click. PER CLICK!!

beambot• 14 years ago

If this becomes popular, I could imagine other "messaging" services (eg. free email services like Gmail) following suit.

I'm still on the fence about whether this is good or bad. Targeted advertisements are a great method of product discovery (at least for me, ie. Amazon). But I'm not sure I'm ready to relinquish my inbox -- email, facebook, or otherwise.

aluhut• 14 years ago

I have never followed an product "advice" that has been forced upon me. For me it is a sign of a bad marketing and/or product and I would rather pay more for a product that has no agressive advertising strategy then support this kind of behaviour.

malandrew• 14 years ago

So long as they share the revenue with me, I'm okay with it. I have for years wanted an inbox where I could charge people to email me.

yen223• 14 years ago

Charge the advertisers $2, $1 goes to Facebook, $1 goes to the victim.

Seems fairer, no?

bradleyland• 14 years ago

I think it's a little optimistic to expect any rev-share with recipients, but creating a better economy on the sending side of mass electronic solicitations is a good idea. The only reason our postal mailboxes aren't dumpster-sized and full of junk mail every single day is the cost of planning, producing, and mailing the physical piece of mail. Email is a shit show because the costs of mailing are near zero, and the cost of producing is decoupled from the number of recipients.

If there were a hard cost per recipient, the ROI of email campaigns would change significantly. This change would be positive for users. The question is whether or not senders would bear the burden, or if they would flow to "less legitimate" means of reaching recipients on Facebook. It may be that senders would more willingly accept lower actual reach rather than pay the additional cost.

shuw• 14 years ago

Revenue sharing could create perverse incentives to game the system. For example, imagine someone in Africa changing their location to United States and liking Gucci, Prada, BMW to become a honeypot. Or pretending to be a celebrity.

piokoch• 14 years ago

I am looking at Facebook stock value on NASDAQ. The more users are complaining, the higher stock value is. Investors seems to like the route taken recently by FB.

For some reason Diaspora is not catching up. I thought that many portal owners, who already provide email accounts, would also provide "social" stuff - Diaspora. User can create account on any Diaspora server and connect with any one on any other Diaspora server.

Maybe this is because Diaspora version is something like 0.0.2. Maybe this is because of technology behind it - Rails, instead of e.g. PHP - ugly, but well known and liked by huge majority of hosting/server admins.

Hopefuly one day Diaspora or something based on similar concept would get popular, like Jabber and, all time winner, e-mail.

ElissaShevinsky• 14 years ago

I don't believe that this is simply about enabling advertisers to message users. Until I have more data this is speculation on my part. That said - I believe this is an attempt to expand their nearly-saturated US market by facilitating users to connect with users outside their friend network. Until now this was discouraged and could lead to termination of your account.

More details: There is a new tool tip in my FB account now stating "Your messages get filtered automatically so you mostly see stuff from friends and people you may know in your Inbox. To review your filtering options, click Other > Edit Preferences. Note: These filters replace the old "Who can send you Facebook message"

zakzakzak• 14 years ago

This article just screams Directly.me , Facebook is lacking originality these days first copying Twitter & now Directly.me it’s too bad they failed on this occasion because Directly.me has a much stronger concept which allows people to search based on Skills, Past experiences, Occupation and Location.. was reading somewhere they got 450,000+ direct connections in just 2 weeks of launch to public.

Also Facebook takes your money, the person on the receiving side gets NOTHING whereas Directly.me gives 80% to the person on the receiving end.

Want to contact a stranger on Facebook? Pay $1

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