Facebook Charges Variable Fees To Send Messages To People Whether You Know Them Or Not
Merriam-Webster defines social media as “forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos).”
Social media was sold to all of us as the great connecting force where we’d all be able to interact regardless of location on the globe or our sociopolitical status. Since the beginning of social media, users have been able to message one another. That trend has come to an abrupt halt on one social network.
Facebook has taken the unprecedented position that you need to pay them for their social networking service if you want to message someone who isn’t already your Facebook friend, regardless of whether or not you know them outside the Facebook network. According to this story, Facebook started testing this move a few months ago in December of 2012. Maybe because Facebook is only on target to make $2.75 billion in 2013 from display ads alone that they felt they needed to take this step. Only. Facebook needs to bilk you for a messaging platform? Absurd.
Facebook is known for their rolling roll-outs of new features. I first noticed the new Facebook messaging fees this week when I attempted to message someone about a story we were working on for The Trenches. I was prompted with a dialog box that looked like Facebook’s standard messaging dialog box with a couple of extra “options”.
1. I could pay $5 and have the message sent to the user’s inbox. That’s right, $5 for a message! Are they going to convert it to a telegram for that price?
2. Or I could send a message for free and the it would end up in the user’s “other” folder. However, messages that get sent to this folder don’t come with a notification on the recipient’s end, nor do these messages get viewed a majority of the time since most people I spoke with didn’t know that there’s an “other” folder in the Facebook message system.
As a result of this revelation, I checked my “other” folder and to my dismay I found several messages from people who had attempted to provide The Trenches tips and information for important stories. Some of these tips were of no use now since those stories have subsequently been broken elsewhere. Way to go, Facebook. $ocial media fail.
I decided to test this feature with people that I know “in real life” that I’m not connected with on Facebook, to see if I’d be prompted for a fee to message them. In all but one of the 6 test case,s I was prompted for fees of $1 and $5 to send these people messages. It appears that Facebook is using some sort of a weighted algorithm for the message fees. Maybe the $5 contact I was trying to reach had been contacted by more people since I was contacting them about a notable event where they were a key player. Is Facebook applying a supply and demand threshold to this algorithm? One thing is certain - Facebook have taken it upon themselves do decide that they are now the arbiters of whether or not you pay a variable fee to contact someone that you may or may not already know.
Let that sink in.
Am I a $5 contact or a $1 contact? How expensive a contact are you to those you’re whom you’re not already connected?
It’s easy to imagine that the next major news event, such as a tsunami, or the next “Arab Spring” political revolution, will find people avoiding the use of Facebook to send messages to journalists if those tipsters will be charged a fee to do so. That’s a no-brainer. They’ll use Twitter for that purpose and be done with it.
Is this yet another reason to consider shutting down the Facebook account and moving to Google+? I still contend that Google+ is a much more elegant platform. Wait a minute… Google brings its own nightmares to the table. Diaspora? Maybe, but it’s been 3 years and people are still not using Diaspora.
Or maybe it’s just time to put a line item in The Trenches budget - “Fee$ to $end me$$age$ to contact$ and $ource$ on Facebook” - and be done with it.
