I did the usual tonight. Logged into Facebook. We all do it. But tonight I was mildly surprised.
After wishing a friend a happy birthday by posting on their wall I noticed that a new button had appeared alongside the more normal ‘Like’ and ‘Share’ on my post. I also got a balloon notification. Apparently we can now promote our posts. This will apparently move our promoted post further up the news-feed. It asked me for £2-01p to do this.
Now I have always poo-pooed the stories that do the rounds on FB about it becoming paid for. We’ve all seen them. People asking you to share a post about FB costing so much per month from a certain date. Any I get are deleted within seconds usually followed by me informing the gullible that the story they refer to is a hoax. And it is. Facebook will always be free….. buttttttt.
I’ll tell you a story. Me and my Raven also use another social networking site. It’s now called MeetMe but recently it was better known as MyYearbook. It’s where we first met and I do keep it going as I keep all our old posts/gifts/messages etc on it. But anyway MeetMe has two types of membership. Free and paid for(known as V.I.P membership) The free one that I use is fine but it restricts your use in many way and you receive ads everywhere that do get rather annoying.
I do believe that this is the road that Facebook will take and what I have seen tonight with the ‘Promote’ button is the thin edge of the wedge. It is a huge moneymaking organization but as we have seen recently even that does not protect it from the vagaries of the stock markets. It’s probably why Zuckerberg is backing away from his baby. I believe he has taken it as far as it can go in it’s present form.It the capitalist society you cannot just sit still. You always have to be looking for bigger profits or jumping on the next bandwagon.
Now I know that we shall soon start to see the boycott the Promote button posts and pages but they will have as much impact on FB as the ‘We want a Dislike’ button campaigns did. There are always plenty of mugs out there who will pay.
Be warned. And as always … BE CAREFUL AND BE AWARE.