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Facebook Thinks You'll Want To Pay $7 To Promote Your Friends' Posts
If a friend of yours is running in a marathon for charity and is trying to raise money, you might want to pay $7 to promote her status updates so almost of your friends are guaranteed to see the post in your News Feed, Facebook believes.
That new feature is being rolled out right now, according to Bloomberg.
“If your friend is renting their apartment out and she tells her friends on Facebook, you can share the post with the people you and your friend have in common so that it shows up higher in news feed and more people notice it,” the company told Bloomberg.
This feature might be of use to political, "good cause," and non-profit advertisers who normally would have limited budgets to promote their social media content. They could call on their fans to spread the word through $7 "donations" of promoted posts.
People can already pay to promote their own posts on Facebook. Not everyone sees all status updates. Facebook's News Feed algorithm (which has been called Edgerank in the past) ensures that only about 15 percent of an account holder's posts are seen by their friends or fans.
Only very viral posts, which attract a lot of attention get seen by everybody. The system is designed to reduce boring, spam posts.
Charity Engine, a British company which raises money for non-profits, has complained in the past that Facebook discriminates against posts it randomly deems boring — which would include worthy-but-dull updates from well-meaning groups that fall on deaf ears in the news feed.
Disclosure: The author owns Facebook stock.
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