Convinced Facebook Has Lost It!

well, if you are not her friend already I suppose that is a smart spam filter. Once people have thousands of friends, it will be a massive marketing strategy if you are allowed to do that for free. At the very least facebook decide to charge the spammer one dollar instead of blocking them directly. I think they are desperate to get some pocket money from this scheme. But if you are really his / her old friend, and you want to message your high school crush then it is a different story.

Instead, I use tumblr for today's social network marketing. Just post a few very good image with the right tag, spend one hour each day, I can get around 1000 traffic to my website, can't top that with Facebook nowadays. I can even set up a site for free with tumblr.

Facebook lost me when they started charging me to have my followers see my posts. Greed!

I agree with Cyber Star on using Tumblr over facebook if it works for your niche. Facebook is trying to get money from anywhere they can. It started with charging for status updates on your fanpages. Facebook does not give a $hit about its users, they are the definition of a wolf in sheeps clothing. First you get the users, then you get the money, and they have all the users they could hope for so now it's time to get paid.

This is a good strategy from Facebook - they ask you for something you wouldn't want to do (pay) and they give you as alternative something they really want you to do (Increase your network by adding that person to your friends).

For them is a win win situation, they either get your money or more info about you to use them in their advertising.

For us users it is not really correct, but FaceBook is a service we accepted to use with all it's rules and nobody actually forces us to do so.

FB is under big pressure to monetize now as a public company to support Zucks billions. They'll push the limit and step on many users toes.

I think FB will be replaced by a free open source social network that will not be pressured to monetize. Look how quickly people abandoned myspace for FB. Look at the music biz how quickly 'free' distribution online changed things. If there would be a way to import your friends/connections to a new social network it could sink real fast.

They have to walk the line carefully to not create the initial domino exit.

I see that charging fan pages for distribution has just caused biz owners to use their own personal account for biz distribution. FB prob counteracts that w/ limiting the # of friends you have. In one way, its not a bad way to limit the spamming by charging a bit, all depends on if FB delivers the ROI for advertisers. Some people get peeved because they look at FB is some free public utility, which it is not. But it could be with an open source FB challenger if FB steps on too many toes.

It's $1, bots won't be able to pay. It's a good way to eliminate the Social Media Bots out there... meanwhile SEO suffers. Don't worry, fb doesn't expect anyone to pay.

They are just trying to suck as much money out of their users as they can.

It's reasonable, being that you get full access to the number 1 social network for free.

I had read that they would be experimenting with this in order to cut down on spammy friend request and PMs.

Yeah, going overboard on monetization, aren't they?

Facebook is slowly turning into a spam box, exactly the same mistake myspace made when Zuckerburg topped their idea. I would give it maybe 1 more year before they start trying to enforce sometime of membership to get rid of ads. It is already bad enough when it is just bombarded with application requests and posts. But then again, that is how Facebook makes 80% of their income.

Oh, this is only the beginning...