Facebook starts charging money for contacting famous people Facebook starts charging users up to £11 to contact celebrities Trial charge for messages to people outside users' social circle, from 71p for Robert Peston to £10.68 for Tom Daley Lisa O'Carroll guardian.co.uk, Monday 8 April 2013 10.25 BST Facebook users could pay £10.68 to contact Tom Daley. Photograph: Peter Tarry/NOPP Facebook has started charging UK users up to £11 to send messages to celebrities and other people outside their circle of friends. It has just launched a test scheme in the UK with fees ranging from as much as £10.68 to contact a celebrity such as Olympic swimmer Tom Daley. It costs a standard 71p to contact less well-known figures, such as BBC's Robert Peston or Prince Harry's girlfriend Cressida Bonas, who do not have an official army of fans or followers. Facebook confirmed the experiment but said it did not know yet whether it would be implement across the social network. "It is being tested among a very small percentage of users," said a spokeswoman. "There is no set timescale. It depends on what happens, what feedback we get as to whether it is rolled out nationally. We are testing a number of price points in the UK and other countries to establish the optimal fee that signals importance. This is still a test and these prices are not set in stone." Facebook has been trialling charging at its US operation since December. The trial has now been extended to a further 36 countries, including the UK. Facebook said the charging fee structure varied according to a number of factors including the number of followers and a secret "fame" algorithm. The vast majority of users in the UK can still send messages to strangers for free, but those involved in the test can see the fee scale ranges from the £10.68 for a household name such as Daley to £10.08 to contact author Salman Rushdie. Others such as comedian Miranda Hart, culture secretary Jeremy Hunt and comedian Bill Bailey are all in the 71p standard price bracket. The launch of the charging feature will be controversial. Facebook said it was a way of inhibiting spamming for famous people as paid-for messages go straight to the recipient's inbox rather than the "other" folder which receives all communication from people outside a user's circle of friends. In January, Facebook was ridiculed for setting a $100 (£61) fee to contact founder Mark Zuckerberg. He has previously said he would like Facebook messaging to become an alternative to email. The network rolled out @facebook.com email addresses to all users last June. Iain Mackenzie, a spokesman for Facebook Europe, said the charging structure should not be mistaken for a fame barometer. "There's not a sliding scale based on fame. You can't infer someone's level of 'celebrity' from the numbers," he said. http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/...-Daley-008.jpg Facebook starts charging users up to £11 to contact celebrities | Technology | guardian.co.uk |
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im surprised facebook is still popular... i thought it would have become myspace by now and something else would be in its place.... maybe this will help push it towards that :) |
^it only becomes obsolete when something else takes over like myspace did to friendster and what facebook did to myspace |
yes I expected that google would have overtaken it or something, anything but nope :/ |
lets start RevFriends and kill FB!! :troll: |
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Or we can all just see our friends in person |
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Can you smell what the Barack is cooking? |
Maybe Revscene should start charging Timpo to post... |
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I hardly use fb messenger so doesn't matter to me. |
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must be the farmville and candycrush saving it :ilied: but I still use it frequently. |
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I think most of us were guilty of Facebook creeping in its heyday. I still have a Facebook account, but I barely post anything onto it and most of my "Facebook friends" don't either. It's a good tool to keep in touch and message acquaintances, but it's hit a plateau in terms of popularity and use. Facebook is not like Youtube where there is a compelling reason to visit the site on a regular basis. Posted via RS Mobile |
Solution: Get all famous people to delete their FB accounts. |
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Here's hoping to summer filled with bikini pics again...but doubt it Posted via RS Mobile |
That's probably because all those slutty photos are now being posted on instagram. :fullofwin: |
facebook ain't going away anytime soon. unless you have a lot of friends, your perspective of how facebook is, is highly skewed. what you experience on facebook is limited to you and your "circle" friends. of course if you only have a few hundred friends or less, your news feed will be pretty pathetic unless you have followed or "liked" a lot of other subscriptions. lots of people follow mini celebs, or topics, or have joined groups that only exist on facebook. think of facebook like your social newspaper. you need tons of reporters and people writing articles for each news paper for you to read a few paragraphs in a whole news paper... so what makes you think yours will have anything decent to read if you only have a few people posting stuff? the problem is a lot people don't wanna get invited to things or get annoyed when their "calendar" is full of invitations. but that's what it's for. it's like an overview of your social circles and their extent into other circles. you see what activities are going on around in town, what events other ppl are going to. you can choose to participate or know for the sake of knowing what's going on around you etc. it's still going strong and a shit ton of ppl use it for so many things. i duno about you guys, but if i really wanna read all the fucking shit on my news feed everyday, i have to take like 25-30min to scroll through everything, which is a lot. i get tons of invites to events and bday parties on the facebook calendar feature which i would not be informed of if i didn't check. this isn't just like a myspace or friendster, that would be like comparing your iphone to a pocket calculator. |
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Because on instagram it's just all pictures. Who needs all those wordy status updates? I mean, who wants to READ on the internet, anyways? |
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I hate Instagram though. Why does it have to be a square? Why can't we click on the pic and zoom in or save? Sometimes I need to zoom in closer to see titties okay?!? Gosh! Posted via RS Mobile |
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