Facebook Will Let People You Don’t Know Message Your Inbox For $1

If you start noticing a few more
messages in your Facebook inbox in
the coming weeks from people you
don't know, here's why.
Facebook announced Thursday that it
is testing a new option to charge users
a one-time fee of $1 to send a message
to another user's inbox on the network
who they aren't friends with.
Currently, if you send a Facebook
message to someone you're not
connected to, it may end up in the
Other tab, an oft-overlooked
subsection of the inbox that basically
serves as a spam folder, depending on
whether you have mutual connections.
With the new option, however, you
would be able to pay a premium to
ensure that the message ends up in the
main inbox where it's likely to be seen
by the recipient.
A Facebook rep told Mashable that
users will have the option to mark the
incoming message as spam and move it
to the Other tab, which means the
sender will be unable to reach their
inbox afterwards. However, if the
recipient doesn't take any action, the
sender will be able to continue
messaging that user's inbox an
unlimited number of times after
paying the one-time fee.
"Today we're starting a small
experiment to test the usefulness of
economic signals to determine
relevance," Facebook said in a blog
post. "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."
Facebook is billing the change as an
attempt to crack down on spam by
seeing if "imposing a financial cost on
the sender" serves as a deterrent to
sending unwanted messages. Yet, it
seems just as likely that it could lead to
an increase spam, as anyone from a
marketer to your ex-girlfriend could
potentially use the option to flood your
inbox with unwanted messages.
For Facebook, the move appears to be
a thinly veiled attempt at testing out a
potential new revenue source.
LinkedIn offers a similar option, which
lets users with premium accounts
message those outside their network.
Facebook has tried to monetize
anything and everything on the site,
recently announcing an option for
average users to pay $7 to promote a
post on the social network so that
more people see it.
The new pay-to-message option was
announced as part of a larger set of
changes to Facebook Messages,
including new filtering options to
determine whether you mostly see
messages from friends or from friends
and related contacts you may know.