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Facebook Will Let People You Don't Know Message Your Inbox For $1

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Re: Facebook Will Let People You Don't Know Message Your Inbox For $1

#2
Direct Mail spam. Even if this is something some businesses will pay for, and even if it isn't a lot of messages, it is still an annoyance.

Would there be 1,000 businesses willing to spend $1 million each to send a message to a million people? That's $1 billion. Can messages be targeted enough and give a good enough ROI? Will users be pissed off and dismiss businesses that put ads into their private inbox?

More negatives than positives, IMHO..

Re: Facebook Will Let People You Don't Know Message Your Inbox For $1

#3
I think Facebook is on the right path with this as a potential money making idea.

However, they need some modifications if they don't want to piss off their users in implementing it.

Here's my suggestion(s):

Let users specify how much it should cost to contact them, and let them keep a percentage of every dollar over $1. Then let marketing messengers set a 'maximum cost' amount - if it's too costly, they won't send.

Don't want to be messaged? Set your price insanely high.

Don't mind being messaged as long as you get something out of it? Set it to $2-$5.

Win for everyone.

Re: Facebook Will Let People You Don't Know Message Your Inbox For $1

#4
post #2

Direct Mail spam. Even if this is something some businesses will pay for, and even if it isn't a lot of messages, it is still an annoyance. Would there be 1,000 businesses willing to spend $1 million each to send a message to a million people? That's $1 billion. Can messages be targeted enough and give a good enough ROI? Will users be pissed off and dismiss businesses that put ads into their private inbox? More negat…

Set caps on spam and auction the space, then. If the price of getting to your inbox is $10 people will have to have a really good reason for getting in touch.

I'm usually anti-FB but I'm curious to see where this goes.

Re: Facebook Will Let People You Don't Know Message Your Inbox For $1

#5
post #3

I think Facebook is on the right path with this as a potential money making idea. However, they need some modifications if they don't want to piss off their users in implementing it. Here's my suggestion(s): Let users specify how much it should cost to contact them, and let them keep a percentage of every dollar over $1. Then let marketing messengers set a 'maximum cost' amount - if it's too costly, they won't send.…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook Will Let People You Don't Know Message Your Inbox For $1

#6
post #3

I think Facebook is on the right path with this as a potential money making idea. However, they need some modifications if they don't want to piss off their users in implementing it. Here's my suggestion(s): Let users specify how much it should cost to contact them, and let them keep a percentage of every dollar over $1. Then let marketing messengers set a 'maximum cost' amount - if it's too costly, they won't send.…

One big issue here (solvable, but something to think about): this would make messages a source for money laundering, which I'd bet fb would like to avoid.

Then again, they already deal with this with fb credits, so maybe this wouldn't be too taxing to deal with.

Re: Facebook Will Let People You Don't Know Message Your Inbox For $1

#7
post #4
post #2

Direct Mail spam. Even if this is something some businesses will pay for, and even if it isn't a lot of messages, it is still an annoyance. Would there be 1,000 businesses willing to spend $1 million each to send a message to a million people? That's $1 billion. Can messages be targeted enough and give a good enough ROI? Will users be pissed off and dismiss businesses that put ads into their private inbox? More negat…

Set caps on spam and auction the space, then. If the price of getting to your inbox is $10 people will have to have a really good reason for getting in touch. I'm usually anti-FB but I'm curious to see where this goes.

Or, set the price to be a function of the number of messages the sender sent per day.

E.g. If I've sent `s` messages per day averaged over the last N days, the next message that I send should cost (rounded to the nearest penny):

   1.01^(s-1)
That'll put a damper on it right quick. Sending 100 messages will cost $168.79, sending 200 will cost $625.35.

Re: Facebook Will Let People You Don't Know Message Your Inbox For $1

#9
So expensive, this would need to be targeted extraordinarily well for it to be worthwhile for advertisers. Which is possible, because fb knows so much more about you than even google.

When ads are targeted well enough, they stop being spam, and start becoming a welcome service. The question is whether they have reached that threshold.

Re: Facebook Will Let People You Don't Know Message Your Inbox For $1

#10
post #9

So expensive, this would need to be targeted extraordinarily well for it to be worthwhile for advertisers. Which is possible, because fb knows so much more about you than even google. When ads are targeted well enough , they stop being spam, and start becoming a welcome service. The question is whether they have reached that threshold.

Unsolicited commercial mail is always spam. If I post a message to my private about my fridge making funny sounds, that doesn't mean I want to receive a FB message from HardwareStore about their appliance selection.
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