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 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."
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