Facebook could soon have $1 fee for users who want to send messages to people outside of their social networks.
The option for Facebook’s $1 fee is quite a full-time feature yet, as the social networking company said it’s testing it out with a small number of users. People who opt to pay the $1 fee will have their message dropped into the user’s inbox rather than an easier-to-ignore “Other” folder, PC Mag reported .
“Several commentators and researchers have noted that imposing a financial cost on the sender may be the most effective way to discourage unwanted messages and facilitate delivery of messages that are relevant and useful,” Facebook said in a statement.
The Facebook $1 fee will open a conversation thread with a non-Facebook friend, but any subsequent replies won’t cost users anything. The catch is that if the person moves the message to the Other or Spam folder, the sender won’t be able to contact them again.
Many users didn’t even know the Other folder existed until a high-profile incident this summer, PC Mag noted. A bug in certain mobile devices accidentally synched a user’s @facebook.com email address so that messages from friends went to the Facebook inbox while messages from anyone else went to Other.
If successful, the Facebook $1 fee could give the company a new source or revenue, CNET reported . This is already the way the business networking site LinkedIn uses its InMail service, so social media users would not be surprised or to see a fee-for-service model arise in Facebook.
