Facebook Hopes Users Will Pay to Promote Posts

Want more attention for your Facebook posts? Open your wallet.
Facebook’s new “Promote” feature, released Oct. 3 to a small group in the U.S., allows users to pay Facebook to promote important pictures or announcements.

Those with access to the feature say a promoted post typically costs around $7, CNN reported.
According to the story, that price tag is part of the experiment: A company spokeswoman said that Facebook is “considering a variety of prices.”

“Every day, news feed delivers your posts to your friends. Sometimes a particular friend might not notice your post, especially if a lot of their friends have been posting recently and your story isn’t near the top of their feed,” a Facebook blog post reads. “When you promote a post — whether it’s wedding photos, a garage sale, or big news — you bump it higher in news feed so your friends and subscribers are more likely to notice it.”

The feature was first tested out in New Zealand in May, then expanded to a limited number of users in 20 countries.

Facebook has not released how many U.S. users have access to the Promote option, saying only that it’s a “limited subset” of the social media site’s 166 million American users. Currently, only those with less than 5,000 friends and subscribers have been granted access.