The picture shows the option of "Promote" available on a picture for
users to bump up their important status updates high up in the news
feeds of their friends
For all those frequenting Facebook, the social
networking website can now turn into a forum for promoting themselves as
by paying a few bucks, people can now use the media for highlighting
something they want to.
If you want more of your
friends to see your funny one liner or personal announcement, pony up
little cash and you will get more visibility.
Although
the price has not yet been fixed but Facebook already soft-launched its
latest paid product ‘promoted posts’ yesterday as part of its effort to
mop up more revenues.
For a small fee, the new
feature lets US users bump up their important status updates high up in
the news feeds of their friends.
Facebook says the
feature is targeted towards the everyday user, those with fewer than
5,000 followers, rather than big brands, and should be used for things
like yard sales, wedding engagements and other personal events.
It is currently available to US users only.
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.
Similarly, New York-based
blogging service Tumblr recently unveiled a program that allows users to
pin blog posts to the top of their followers’ news feeds for a day.
The feature was reportedly unveiled to New Zealand users in May and has since rolled out to more than 20 countries.
However,
the announcement has been met with mixed reactions, and those who
oppose it have keyed in on one of Facebook’s core values of providing
services free of cost.
