Question from Jamie: Hi. Just yesterday I tried to send someone I wasn’t “friends” with two pictures they had asked for. Facebook said if I wanted to have the message go directly into their message box, I had to pay a $1.00.
I also sent someone a link in a private message, and she could not take the link from her private message and put it to her site without paying. Is this Facebook really doing this or just another scam?
Rick’s answer: Jamie, this isn’t a scam. It really is Facebook asking you to pay them a buck in exchange for sending your message to the recipient’s inbox instead of the “Other” folder. They started this a while back as a way of earning more revenue for their shareholders. It’s hard to imagine they’d ever make any money this way, but who knows?
Bottom line: You can send private messages to “strangers” on Facebook all day long, but each message will cost you a buck if you want the recipient to actually see it in a timely manner (if at all). That being said, I’ve noticed that occasionally a message to a non-friend will go through without Facebook asking for payment. But it doesn’t happen very often.
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