The new feature will show users how many more views they got for the money they paid.
It may seem like a surprise to some, but as Facebook hit its 1 billionth member this week, the social networking giant is still in a lot of trouble.
While it is making some money from advertising, Facebook still hasn’t figured out how to make money on its mobile users.
The company’s latest attempt to do so is either brilliant marketing sure to balloon the company’s coffers,or it’s a move that will alienate and anger its users.
In the U.S., this week, a new feature was quietly rolled out, called “Promoted Posts” which will allow users to pay money in order to make sure their status updates are seen by more of their friends than if they just posted without paying.
At first, this strikes me as a blatant cash grab. It irks me a bit that if I update my status and pay $7 (which is the price it is currently set at), that I can become more important than my friends who don’t pay anything.
If someone is trying to raise money for charity, for example, it seems strange for them to have to pay more money for their posts to be seen. The whole idea about Facebook is that popular posts are seen more often because more people share those posts. It forces people to be creative with their wording, to learn to engage their audiences to maximize participation, and it also makes sure that the most worthy causes are the ones that get the most attention. Obviously this doesn’t always work perfectly, but it certainly feels strange that someone can just bypass this whole system by shelling out a few bucks.
On the other hand, if Facebook goes about this properly (which it likely won’t), it could be seen as a positive for users and be a boon for the company’s coffers, and eventually its beleaguered shareholders, since the money from Promoted Posts is basically pure profit.
I would suggest that a separate category be created for promoted posts so that people know when they are looking at posts that people paid money for them to see. Or perhaps promoted posts should be tagged as such, much like advertising features in newspapers.
I can see how some people would be inclined to pay for promoted posts. As Josh Constine writes in TechCrunch, it could be especially useful for people who are having garage sales, and he didn’t have a problem with people paying to get charitable causes highlighted. The catch, though, is that you have to have fewer than 5,000 friends. I guess Facebook figures if you want to truly reach a large audience, you should pay for an ad.
Constine notes that only 12 per cent of a person’s Facebook friends will actually see their status, but many people have figured out by now how to see the FB statuses of the people they really care about and to block out the rest. I do it by actually blocking some, while making sure I am alerted to the updates of those closest to me. Messing with this formula could seriously upset users, namely me.
