Facebook will soon launch a pay to message program for users who wish to contact someone they have not yet chosen to friend.
The new pay to message feature was announced in a Facebook blog post along with other new inbox filtering features.
According to Facebook, the pay to message feature will discourage spam messages. The social network says research found 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.”
The fee could start at $1 and go up from there. Facebook gives the hypothetical example of someone who hears a speaker at an event and who they want to contact directly. If that person pays the Facebook fee, the message is sent directly to the speaker’s inbox.
Facebook says the feature could allow users to “hear from people who have an important message to send them.”
Beta testing of the program is only available in the United States at this time and is limited to a select group of users.
Facebook is offering two types of filters for its platform: basic filtering and strict filtering. The basic filtering is the typical setup most users see today while strict filters allow for more control over the messages users receive.
Basic Filtering
If you select Basic Filtering, you’ll see mostly messages from friends and people you may know (for example, friends of friends) in your Inbox. People who had the previous setting set to “friends of friends” or “everyone” will have Basic Filtering on.
New Facebook Filters:
• Someone using Messenger for Android who is not on Facebook but has your contact info in their phone wanted to send you a message
• A friend of a friend wanted to include you in a message about a party along with some of your mutual friends
• A friend wanted to send a message to your @facebook.com address
Would you pay money to send a non-Facebook-friend a message?
