Facebook starts charging money for contacting famous people

[Timpo]

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.



Facebook starts charging users up to £11 to contact celebrities | Technology | guardian.co.uk

[k3lv]

[StylinRed]

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

[DanHibiki]

^it only becomes obsolete when something else takes over like myspace did to friendster and what facebook did to myspace

[StylinRed]

yes I expected that google would have overtaken it or something, anything but nope :/

[FerrariEnzo]

lets start RevFriends and kill FB!!

[minoru_tanaka]

Originally Posted by FerrariEnzo

lets start RevFriends and kill FB!!

Or we can all just see our friends in person

[Soundy]

[minoru_tanaka]

Can you smell what the Barack is cooking?

[lowside67]

Maybe Revscene should start charging Timpo to post...

[murd0c]

Originally Posted by lowside67

Maybe Revscene should start charging Timpo to post...

More like charging money to thank/fail people

[Mr.HappySilp]

I hardly use fb messenger so doesn't matter to me.

[twitchyzero]

Originally Posted by StylinRed

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

a few years ago with facebook going downhill with the ads/stupid twitter-like feed on the side/picture rights etc i was sure Google+ would take over

must be the farmville and candycrush saving it

but I still use it frequently.

[Tapioca]

Originally Posted by StylinRed

yes I expected that google would have overtaken it or something, anything but nope :/

Facebook was great maybe 6 or 7 years ago because people were much less conscious of their online persona than they are today. Privacy settings were not as entrenched and people had no qualms about tagging their friends in trashy outfits at the bar for all to see.

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

[shenmecar]

Solution: Get all famous people to delete their FB accounts.

[DanHibiki]

Originally Posted by Tapioca

Facebook was great maybe 6 or 7 years ago because people were much less conscious of their online persona than they are today. Privacy settings were not as entrenched and people had no qualms about tagging their friends in trashy outfits at the bar for all to see.

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

Ya I was just saying to my friend the other day "what happened to all the slutty pics that girls post??"

Here's hoping to summer filled with bikini pics again...but doubt it
Posted via RS Mobile

[inkcognito]

That's probably because all those slutty photos are now being posted on instagram.

[Ulic Qel-Droma]

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.

[tru_blue]

Originally Posted by 91_DB1

That's probably because all those slutty photos are now being posted on instagram.

I also noticed that alot of girls are now posting pics on instagram instead of facebook, is it because of a privacy thing or what?

[Razor Ramon HG]

Google+ was better than Facebook in pretty much every single conceivable way. It hit big with the tech/geek crowd first. We LOVED it, and when it came out of beta, we brought our friends over.

Here's the thing: a social network is only as good as the people on it. People are used to Facebook. It's what they know, and it's been dominant for a long time now. Longer than Myspace was. They were invested in Facebook. Getting them to change completely was tough and nearly impossible at the time. This is my very long explanation/metaphor.
Think of social network sites like a bar. Everyone hangs out at the same bar. It's not the greatest bar, but it's where you've been hanging out for years. It's comfortable You know everyone there, you're familiar with it, and everyone's familiar with you. You've got your favorite seat/table. It's that place that when people say "Let's go to the bar", you don't have to ask which bar...it's just The Bar.

So you hear about this other place, The New Bar. You decide to check it out, and it's freakin' AWESOME. They have clean, comfortable seats, a shiny new floor, awesome beers on tap, great lighting, the works. It's the bar you've always wanted, better than The Old Bar in every way. You're so excited to tell your friends about The New Bar, and you're 100% certain that they're going to love it like you do, and they'll all want to switch bars. So you go running to your friends to tell them all about it. And a few of your friends agree to go with you to check it out, and sure enough they love it. They show up a few times and think it's great, and tell their friends.

But after a while? They start to go back to the Old Bar. They don't want to switch bars. They know The Bar. People know them there. The bartender might be an asshole, but he's THEIR asshole. The New Bar's bartender is a nice guy with a flashy smile, but he doesn't make their drinks the way they are used to. And while a lot of people came to The New Bar, not everyone did. And they know that at the Old Bar, they're going to see all of their friends, and know everyone. It may not be nearly as good as the New Bar, but it's comfortable and change is hard. After a while, the New Bar loses its customers, and starts making changes, desperate to gain a new clientele, but really just end up shooting themselves in the foot. In the meantime, the Old Bar makes a few rules changes that the customers grumble and bitch about, but it's not enough to make them change.
Thing is, Myspace drove people out. Facebook didn't win out because it was a better service, it won because Myspace kept changing and changing, trying to meet everyone's needs until it met no one's needs. People flocked to Facebook because it sucked less, not because it was better. No matter how much better Google+ was, Facebook wasn't BAD enough to make people change their comfortable ways. In desperation, Google+ made more and more changes, and now it's an ugly clusterfuck that I really have no desire to use. Funny thing is, I think Facebook has made enough changes, and forced so many security holes and advertisements, that I think if G+ had been released in its original iteration NOW? It might stand a chance. However, Facebook was at its peak when G+ tried to fight it. They got one major boost when Facebook introduced a new security fuckup that made people panic, but it didn't last.

It's a shame. I really was one of Google+'s biggest fans. I absolutely loved it. It was everything I'd ever wanted in a social network.

TomPalmer1979 comments on ELI5: Google +. What, Why?

[Graeme S]

Originally Posted by tru..azn

I also noticed that alot of girls are now posting pics on instagram instead of facebook, is it because of a privacy thing or what?

Because there's none of that bullshit text clogging up their narcissistic sluttiness.

[tru_blue]

Originally Posted by Graeme S

Because there's none of that bullshit text clogging up their narcissistic sluttiness.

what do u mean by "text" ? isnt facebook quality better than instagram (pic wise)? to me it is

[Graeme S]

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?

[twitchyzero]

Originally Posted by Graeme S

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?

wat

[DanHibiki]

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