Business & Tech

Facebook Charging Users To Send Messages

Want to send a message to someone outside your social circle? It's going to cost you more than $1.

Facebook now charges users to send messages to people outside of their social circle, and evidently testing the price points.

We discovered this when we tried to send a message to Mountain View-based Ujena Swimwear to schedule a meeting to profile the business.  

For a user to send a message to another popular person Facebook could charge as much as $15. That fee would direct your message to their inbox. If you don't pay the fee, the message will be relegated to the "other" inbox. 

We asked a Ujena Swimwear employee, if her company instigated that fee. "No," she said. "Facebook started charging automatically." The swimwear company does not receive a portion of that revenue, she explained.

In January, Huffington Post reported that Facebook began to charge $100 to send a message to Mark Zuckerberg, in an attempt to keep down spam.

Facebook, a Menlo Park-based company, does not charge people to send messages to pages that they've liked or "friends," in all the scenarios. I wasn't charged when I sent a message to Flea Street Cafe, or to Mountain View Patch, from my personal Facebook account. 

One way to circumvent the fee is to add the person as a friend. Friend to friend messages remain free. 

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Additional reporting by Claudia Cruz.


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