Photo Credit: “Connected” a self-portrait by Kasey McMahon. Photo by Kevin Rolly
We are deeply appreciative of the time you’ve given Femme Tales over the last three years. Every time you shared our work with your friends and family we did a snappy dance. Unfortunately, our stock holders (Melanie and I) are demanding higher capitalization. That’s why we are absolutely thrilled to launch our brand spankin’ new reading fee. Here’s how the program works:
First Minute on Site – $2
Every following Minute on Site – $1
Price Per Comment – $1.50
Price Per Share – FREE (Except Tuesdays-Mondays between the hours 6am-10pm EST in which you will be charged $2.00 per share. Price does not include sales tax in CA, TX, of AK. All overseas shares include an additional $3.75 electronic transfer fee. All shares originating from China include an additional $1.42 export tax.)
OR…
You can sign up now for the Femme Tales Monthly Membership – This amazing deal gets you ten hours of free literary enjoyment; including unlimited ah-ha moments. We’re also cutting our “share” price in half for our members. Yes, in half!! All of this for an astounding $19.95 per month.
Please note, as of this paragraph, our mutual communication shall no longer be free. We love our tribe and promise to love your financial support even more. To continue, just email us your full credit card information or pay with your PayPal account. ****HERE***** (Not!)
Would you do it?
It was only a few decades ago that we paid for written communication: newspapers, magazines, mail, books. Written thoughts had a dollar value. Then the Internet came along and overtook communication. Not only can we communicate at the speed of light but we get it for free.
Until now. In September Facebook started charging specific users for the ability to communicate with the majority of their friends. Unless you are managing a fan/business page you may still be unaware that Facebook is charging page owners if they want a status update to reach more than 13% of their followers. For example, if we’d like the majority of our Femme Tales followers on Facebook to hear that we’ve posted a new blog on the site, we have to pay $10 for it to show up in the newsfeed of our 1,000+ friends. Our fan page went from a fantastic communication tool between us and our readers to an expensive marketing endeavor. Needless to say, it’s a bit frustrating. As Ryan Holiday states in a recent Dangerous Minds article, “Instead of adding new features and charging you for that, Facebook TOOK reach AWAY and then tried to make everyone pay to get it back.”
Many fan page owners are extremely frustrated with this policy. The majority of them are like us; they don’t have a marketing budget so they’ve compensated for it with their time and energy. The biggest frustration for page owners is that we are now being charged for something we were originally sold as being free. Facebook may want to take the advice I received from Dr. Lissa Rankin: never start charging for something you’ve been giving for free. It ticks people off and turns them away.
Becoming Money Media
Of course, this new Facebook policy is directly connected to the fact that they are now a publically owned company. When Facebook began their focus was building a community, now their goal is money. When profit becomes the focus, policy is bound to alter. Wall Street wants to see profits. We are a nation who prides itself on its democratic, capitalistic practices after all. Everyone has the freedom to make a buck.
If Facebook changed their policy to include all personal pages would you pay $5 so all of your friends could see your wedding photos? Would you pay to share the message from your Syrian friend as she fights for freedom, or a pic of the dog that is one day away from being euthanized, or that your grandmother passed away? How much would you pay to keep your Facebook page, your Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram or Pinterest accounts? Would you pay if your favorite websites charged a fee? Are we becoming so dependant on social media that these corporations could start charging us and we’d have no choice but to pay? And is that okay?
My question to you is this: should the information highway remain free or are we ready for toll roads?
Facebook has rolled out a sponsored post option for personal profiles. I have 375 friends and it’s not $5 they want to charge me. It’s £5 (Im in the UK) Thats about $7.60!
Informations doesn’t have to be free, but the issue with Facebook is that they aren’t demonstrating any value. All that’s important is the $’s.
I think Facebook feels the pressure from their shareholders to make them money. They could have chosen many things but they went for paying. I only have a personal page but even there I am expected to pay for people to see my posts.
This decision made Facebook practically unusable for me. I can’t stay up to date on what my friends post and I can’t let others read my posts.
I always loved twitter more, so my decision was a simple one: not using Facebook anymore other than staying in touch with friends. Hope they will eventually move to twitter or g+
Supposedly those guys who bought Facebook were the villains. Or was it just in the movie Social Networking?
still looking for the paypal button lol Google+ may just have its Day then. I know I’m sick of seeing the same promoted posts and who’s liked what. Its estimated that another 3 billion will be online in the next 10-20 years, think it’ll just drive people else where, twitter linkedin even G+ . Remember myspace, friends reunited perhaps FB day is done – time for a new platform to enter the arena. Sure someone will be monetizing this opportunity with classes how to bypass facebook visibility issues blah blah blah
Too Funny; but so true! Great article!
That’s a good question, Voytek. Are the Facebook stock holders villains? Seems to me it’s the American way to monotenize anything remotely successful. Isn’t that how we define “success” in this country? Can we blame people for wanting to make money off our communication lines? The postal service has been doing it for decades.
My issue with it, and any other social media site that has already been established, is that they are charging for a service that had been free to us for 2 years. Charge me to advertise to people I have not already connected to. Charge me to run a search for new friends that would be a good match for our Femme Tales fan page. Charge me for anything above and beyond what I’ve already been given, but to charge us for the relationships we’ve already built???? That strikes me as a bad business plan. Unfortunately, Facebook has become SO big, even if a million fan pages shut down, I’m not sure it would impact their bottom line. The charging of personal pages, now that just might. Time will tell.
There is also an underlying moral issue here. What happens to the fan pages of all the pet shelters, the missing children pages, the pages of people in locked societies trying to communicate with the outside world? Remember that Facebook played a big role in the Egyptian revolution. Would that have happened if they had been forced to pay a fee for every update? It is the charities and the ragtag social movements that will be impacted the most by this decision.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us. That will be $3.50.
I had heard from a few friends that they were seeing the “promote” button on their personal page but I haven’t got it on mine yet. $7.60? Wow!!
You’ve made a great point, Lianne, one that many page owners are also finding. The owners I know have used the “promote” option to sell a product or promote a blog but the majority are not seeing a return on their investment. Every marketing guru knows, if it doesn’t bring in sales, stop using it.
Great to hear from our friends in the UK! So happy our communication lines remain open and free, otherwise this comment would have cost you a fortune and bought me lunch.