Want Your Facebook Status Seen? Pay Up. - yeagerfamery

Worried that your condition updates on Facebook aren't finding wholly the eyeballs you'd like them to reach? Soon you may make up able to earnings Facebook to give your status updates more profile.

Reports bespeak the fellowship is testing a feature that allows a member to "highlight" a status update — for a price — to make secure many of their "friends" see the bill.

"We're constantly testing new features crossways the site. This particular trial is simply to caliber people's interest in this method of sharing with their friends," a Facebook representative told PCWorld. It's essentially all a Facebook congressman told Stuff, the New Zealand news program website that appears to have noticed this first.

An obvious problem with a pay-for-views organization is that IT has the potential to poison a news feed. Afterward all, isn't the eat algorithm supposed to prioritize postings based on the closeness of a friend or the popularity of a particular posting? Pay-for-views can reprobate that dodging. Worse yet, IT could open the doorway for Sir Thomas More dust — look-alike Spam — appearance in news feeds.

Here's how it works: you'll bring an option of highlighting a status content beside the "like" and "annotate" options by a condition box. If you take the option, a pop-fly window appears, asking for a payment. Payments moldiness be made with a quotation card or PayPal — no virtual Currency Credits accepted.

Facebook's tribulation payments. Source: Thrust

During the trial period, prices wish vary — from free to $2 — as Facebook feels up its members to find the best price point for the feature.

Posts that you highlight will appear higher in news feeds, stay visible longer, and appear to Sir Thomas More friends and subscribers. Other than, they won't stick out out from early messages in a Quaker's news provender so it won't be obvious that you're hooking for eyeballs.

The listen-to-me-I-paid-for-this feature stems from recent analyses that establish that only if 12 percent of a member's friends actually learn their position updates. Away the way, businesses Don River't do much better on the social network. Exclusively 16 percent of their posts are seen by their following.

Is this latest play to Milk money from its members a sign of what we can expect in the future from the social network? This is the kind of stuff — like job layoffs — premeditated to appeal to investors. Once it becomes a overt company with a $90 cardinal market cap, should we expect it to dream up new ways to nickel and dime bag its members to last? Stay tuned.

Follow freelance technology writer John P. Mello Jr. and Today@PCWorld on Twitter.

This clause was updated at 11:10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on May 11, 2012.