In what is another way of monetizing the social networking site in order to please shareholders, Facebook are indeed introducing a paid message feature.
It might not be what is seems though. If you’re worried that you are going to have to start paying to message your “best buds” on Facebook then you needn’t be, because providing you are friends with them on Facebook, messaging them will still cost you nothing at all.
The feature that started rolling in towards the latter part of 2012 is about messaging people you are NOT friends with on Facebook.
You see, what you might not have realised is that when you send a Facebook message to a non-friend, it gets put in their rather hard-to-find “Other” folder.
The “Other” folder, in case you were not familiar with it, is situated right next to your main Inbox, and houses messages that have been sent to you by people not on your Facebook friends list. If you didn’t know about it, check it, because you may have unread messages in there. You see, when someone not on your friends list messages you, you don’t get notified. Instead the message gets silently directed to the “Other” folder. Thus there is a chance you may never read it, or if you do it may be weeks or months after it was sent.
So the paid message feature being introduced by Facebook directs messages to non-friends to their inbox, not their “Other” folder, thus practically guaranteeing it will be read, and in a timely manner. Of course users can still message non-friends for free and have their message sent to the “Other” folder, where, according to Facebook, it may get lost in the depths of time and obscurity (paraphrased greatly). The cost of messaging non-friends inboxes, whilst changed frequently by Facebook, is around $1.00 (70p-ish).
So yes, Facebook are introducing a paid message feature, but only to the “real Inbox” of non-friends. And yes, you can still message your friends for free.
And if you’ve been hearing rumours about this in April 2013, then that’s probably down to yet another paid message feature being tested by Facebook in the UK where users can message celebrities for a surplus charge – often as up to £11.00 (if you want to message Tom Daley or other high profile celebrities, that is).
And of course whilst Facebook are happy to take your money there is a high chance your digital fan mail will never be read nor even acknowledged by the celebrity recipient – so our advice – buy a stamp and stick to traditional snail fanmail (or Twitter).