Facebook's New Business is Charging Users to Connect With Friends!
Well the day has come....
On Wednesday, Facebook announced that it is now testing a fee to charge users $7 to get exposure on their friends news feed in the US and 20 other countries.
Has Facebook has now completely sold its soul to the devil?
Prior to the IPO on the stock market, Mark Zuckerberg claimed that he was not going to bend his vision, one in which money was not the end game, rather an improvement of the social community.
I guess the reality of having a dwindling stock price took over and there is now a mission to earn as much revenue as possible, regardless of its affect on the actual users (which in my opinion is a very short sighted vision).
This is an iteration of something that was already implemented on business pages. Earlier this summer, Facebook rolled out the ability for people to "promote" their facebook business page status updates...to well, people that already liked their page.
Yes, you read that correctly. If you are a business and someone "liked" your business page, you have to now pay to access this person. These are people that have essentially requested information from you, but in order for them to get it, the business now has to pay Facebook a fee.
I have tested this extensively and I can tell you that it does lead to likes, but it appears as though these likes are from either fake users or they are triggered from users that are in a geographic location where your "Promote" is deemed completely useless.
With over 1 billion users, Facebook is hoping to capitalize. I hope that paying to talk to your friends does not become a norm and if you try the argument, "We pay for our cell phones and that connects us to our friends" you are going to be in for a good battle.
Facebook, on the verge of floundering. They are now violating an entity within their system, the most valuable one, users and charging people for social activity.
Shame on them!
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LOL, I think Justin Timberlake invested in MySpace a few years back. He has not done much with it, I think that some of the celebs think the technology game is easier than it is.
Well, I for one am sick of it. If it becomes useless to post on then I will just stop using it. Unfortunately, it is a good way to connect with family outside the local area.
I guess its time to push them all over to Google+.
It will always serve a purpose, but it is whether or not something else comes along to serve the same purpose, better. If it is all about connecting with your family members, perhaps another medium will come along that does a better job and really allows you to connect to them (perhaps G+).
Not so quick, the journey to the end is long and rarely ever happens. MySpace is still kicking around and FB will be as well 15 years from now. The popularity is what is going to suffer though.
I have noticed a lot of activity on blogs/articles lately regarding Facebook's new intentions. On Techhive.com, there is an article "Facebook Edges Closer to Selling your Personal Data". From the article comes this - Facebook is now allowing some of its advertisers to target Facebook users based on email address and phone numbers from their personal profile. (WTF?) I'm sure Facebook is trying to prop up its value in a very selfish and sneaky way. Facebook is selling us out. Do we need more SPAM?
Yeah, no kidding.
Facebook is already selling our data. As an advertiser on Facebook you can target people based on their birthday, their interests, there likes, what they are talking about, where they are from, so in a sense this is just going to be an additional layer of selling your personal data, this time it is targeting your most personal information though, an email and a phone number!
Well, good thing I took my phone number off of Facebook after I had a stalker and I don't use the email associated with my Facebook account anymore, so I guess I am safe! =]
I think so too Veronica. This spiral will continue if they keep making their decisions based on bottom line versus morality.
I see Facebook going the way of netflix at some point. NFLX was a $300 stock that did not put their customers first.
Decided to charge customers 60% more for the same services and blatantly said they have enough subscribers so they were not worried about the people that would leave.
As a result their stock price was decimated as it dropped from $300+ per share to as low as $55 in a manner of months.
Only difference between FB and netflix is that Netflix was valuable at one point.
I see other companies coming in and taking market share from FB. FB is not the end-all. They are severely underestimating their customers and they will pay the ultimate price for it.
On another note I see Apple eventually going the route of the almost obsolete blackberry - as the android phones continue to dominate.
I too think Facebook will be an obsolete entity at some point. Now that they have started down this path to make investors happy, it is going to be hard to turn back.
If Apple does the same thing, does this mean Google is going to own the phone market, the search market and the social network market. If so, now is a good time to pick up some Google stock!
Google stock is currently at (or very close to) an all time high $768 per share. Google is working on a phone so they have a ways to go to have the best phone.
Right now I would say HTC and Samsung are making the best phones.
Google's android operating system is one of the best out there right now in my opinion. I-phone 5 is just a novelty at this point and since the release of the Iphone 5, the reviews suggest that the I-phone 5 is not as good as the Samsung Galaxy S III which runs on Android.
Never had an I-phone, and I never will. But the new I-phone 5 has a new adapter, which means all the dock stations, treadmills, GPS systems, car connectors, etc...will have to be changed out. As a customer that change alone would make me want to boycott the phone.
Also the apple CEO recently had to issue an apology about the crappy maps of the I-phone 5.
Apple stock hit $700 around the release of the I-phone 5 but since the phone came out the stock dropped to $666....yep a very unlucky number indeed.
Google Hangout looks really promising right now
Wow! I wish I could say I'm not surprised, but this is so nasty even I can't believe the gall of FB's greed. Kyle, you should do your upmost to make WAU as FB-like as possible, and offer the social side of it for free.
However, this story DOES exactly illustrate the idea of how our possessions 'own' us, if we allow them, as I mentioned in my "What's Your Excuse?" post. You have t o wonder how terrified Zuckerman must be to lose any of his incredible wealth, even though he should remember that being 'normal' isn't all that bad.
Yeah, people do lose their perspective on "what is normal" and always view the other side as being cookies and cream. The problem here is that as you said, Zuckerberg is seeing his incredible amount of Wealth, something that has never been realized or would ever be used, as a comparison for success and he is letting his vision go as a result.
Vision and principle will lead to a much more sustainable brand, something that FB is losing out on here.
While the typical FB user in the lower age groups has no clue about the (dwindling) value of the dollar, unless it's an iTunes account with Daddy's credit card, most people seem hesitant to pay unless it's an item they want that will be shipped to them.
After all, as affiliate marketers haven't we encountered a resistance for visitors to PAY for information? (and we do it ourselves, too!)
I could add a different word other than Shame on them but it wouldn't be appropriate for a business website
Haha, I bet. I truly think that if they make this a major roll out, they are going to be in for a surprise in terms of the reaction that people have. Another thing that Facebook is doing now is selling your data to the highest bidder in a sense, they have some much info on people now that it has become far more valuable than just selling ads.
See my response to @Salem above as to how they are selling your data already. Companies everywhere would LOVE to have the sort of data facebook has on you and they are already able to access it.
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Problem with facebook is that their value is always hypothetical. "We have 1 billion users". No, you have 500 million users with an average of 2 accounts each, when they floated on the stock market people recognised that their value was inflated and sold sold sold
Yeah, and of this 500 million people, how many people are truly active, how many are bots (A LOT) and how many are just posting automated spam. I think this trims it down into the 10's of millions of real users.