

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

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sixQuarks
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.

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

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

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adrr
Target based ads are CPC, so its pay per click. Lets do some simple math, i
send out 10,000 messages. 10% open the message, 10% click the link or
whatever. Whats my cost per click assuming $1 per message.

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sakopov
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.

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beambot
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.

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malandrew
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.

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bradleyland
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.

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piokoch
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.

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philip1209
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.

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sixQuarks
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

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citricsquid
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?

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sixQuarks
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.

~~~
citricsquid
I might be misunderstanding how Facebook advertising works, so correct me if
I'm wrong, but from my work with it I understand it to work as follows:

I (a Facebook user) have likes, I have interactions with things (pages,
people, websites) and I have personal information (age, gender). An advertiser
can target these things (eg: 21 year old male) but they cannot say "Give me
the profile URLs of every that likes Minecraft" can they?

For example I currently have this advert displaying on Facebook:
<http://i.imgur.com/3p9oy.png>, Thinkgeek don't know who _I_ am, only Facebook
does. Thinkgeek provide the targeting information, Facebook execute it.

If this is the case, how would a company like Thinkgeek ever know to message
me about Minecraft things? unless Facebook provided them with my profile,
which they do not. The only way to do it would be if they were scraping
profiles, which Facebook do not allow and if Facebook were to allow it they
would build out such a system (targeted messages).

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unsquare
They can target everything.

Country,City,Age,Sex,Relationship Status,Language,Education,Workplace,Platform
and finally interest based.

Interest based can be as specific as "Liking" a minecraft page or as broad as
gaming. They can target you for using a specific app on facebook or playing a
specific game.

They can target every single thing about you.

Edit: It's late.

I've re-read your comment.

It would probably not be a direct message from Thinkgeek , but more like a
marketing email with whatever content they provided to facebook.

It would feel weird to receive a direct message from a company and might look
sketchy.

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arjunb
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.

~~~
niggler
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.

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ximeng
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.

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niggler
"otherwise the message is received without a cost to the sender"

Sure FB could take a cut of each message fee but that wasn't the OP proposal

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ximeng
No, but it is compatible with the motivation behind it.

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xoail
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.

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pitchups
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-...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57560256-93/facebook-tests-$1-fee-
for-inbox-access/)

~~~
cdh
Also, details from Facebook itself: [http://newsroom.fb.com/News/558/Update-
to-Messaging-and-a-Te...](http://newsroom.fb.com/News/558/Update-to-Messaging-
and-a-Test)

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ElissaShevinsky
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"

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visarga
> 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
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.

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

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zakzakzak
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.

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pbateman
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
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.

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

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visarga
That's not the problem. The problem is that they want us to pay to deliver
messages to people who already "Liked" our page and thus have a pre-
established interest/subscription.

~~~
pbateman
Actually they're both symptoms of the same problem which is the more facebook
tries to monetize the sleazier it feels.

LinkedIn probably has the advantage here because it was started explicitly as
a resume/business/hustling platform, whereas facebook started as a way for
students to keep in touch with friends.

~~~
onedev
Please explain how it is sleazy?

They have a service which they are providing to you for free. They need to
monetize this service and they're trying out different things.

In this case, it's not so much about monetization as it is about cutting spam,
and erecting a monetary barrier which is huge in cutting down spam.

~~~
shoopy
People don't have defenses like spam filters for FB like they do on email,
because that channel was relatively clean of unwanted messages.

It's sleazy because they have weaned people off open and free protocols into
their walled garden and now they are going in for the kill. It's like how
Nestle gave baby formula to African mothers so that they would stop lactating,
then they cut off the supply and charged the mothers ridiculous prices so they
could continue nourishing their babies.

~~~
yuhong
They made it cost money and limit the rates in which such paid messages can be
posted.

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

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borlak
so, spam.

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transitionality
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.

