Facebook Inc is letting users in the United States pay a fee to boost the visibility of their postings on the social network, the company’s latest effort to look beyond advertisers for revenue.
The promoted-posts-for-users feature, which Facebook began offering as a test on Wednesday to a limited number of its US users, ensures that a comment or photo shared by a Facebook member gets prominent billing in their friends’ newsfeeds.
Facebook is considering a variety of prices. The current test price in the United States is $7, according to a Facebook spokesman. The move marks Facebook’s latest effort to experiment with new ways to make money beyond advertising, which accounted for roughly 84 per cent of the company’s revenue in the second quarter.
Facebook also takes a 30 per cent cut of purchases of virtual goods by users playing Zynga's Farmville and other social games on its website.
With Facebook’s revenue growth rate showing a sharp slowdown in recent quarters, many analysts and investors believe the company needs to find new ways to make money.
While the feature is garnering mixed reviews, it's certainly not the first social network to promote status updates to those that are willing to pay a small fee.
Earlier, Twitter began charging fee for promoted posts after being ridiculed for years because the service was not cash positive.
