TechCrunch today reported on a new monetization model that Facebook is testing that may lead to the social network losing all credibility around the incentivized sharing debate. The company is apparently testing a new program that allows private Facebook users to pay to have their Status Updates circulated to more of their friends and subscribers. Currently the average status update is only seen by about 12% of your friends and subscribers due to Facebook’s relevancy filter algorithm. A huge debate quickly ensued on TechCrunch about whether this new feature was a spam machine or not. Although many are arguing that this represents a huge breach in Facebook’s anti-spam policy, which is also the guiding principal in the incentivized sharing debate, personally I don’t believe a judgement on that can be made on this without more details.
If this is simply a feature to turn off the filter algorithm so that more of your friends can see your posts, then although it may be a bit of an strange way for Facebook to make money (first limiting your reach and then asking you to pay to undo that limitation), I would not consider this spam because the people who will see your post are your friends or subscribers who have all opted-in to see your posts. In fact when they chose to accept you as a friend, they positively expect to see your updates. However if this system makes your posts visible to friends who have explicitly opted out of seeing your posts by selecting the ‘Unsubscribe’ feature, then it would definitely fall under the spam category and Facebook’s position on incentivized sharing would become untenable. The details are really important here, and at this point I don’t believe enough is known to be able to make a conclusive argument either way. We’ll follow up on this as soon as more information becomes available.
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