The first thing that needs to be highlighted, in block capitals at that, is that Facebook Home is an app meant mainly for Facebook addicts. It is a theme app and pretty much takes over the UI of your Android device, although you can turn it off from its settings (the very first option lets you do so). So if you are not the type who checks The Social Network every five minutes, then Home is definitely not for you. If you are, however, then there are some goodies here for you.

With Facebook Home, your device’s lockscreen becomes a never-ending slideshow of status updates from your friends. Switch on the display and you will see posts made by your friends drift across the display, one at a time. If they are pictures they will occupy the entire display, shifting gently all the while, and if they are wordy ones, then will be accompanied by your cover page picture, still shifting gently. You can take an eyeful of the update at one go by long-pressing on it and can switch between different updates by swiping across the screen – and you do not need to unlock the screen to do so. You can also comment and like updates – double tapping on an update automatically ‘likes’ it, which is kind of cool, although commenting follows the more ‘normal’ select-option-and-then-type route. Yes, it pretty much locks you into Facebook and you cannot control what you see on it, but we can see people getting used to Cover Feed – as it is called – simply because it works smoothly, although we suspect it will gobble bandwidth.

You can make life a trifle less Facebook-y by unlocking the screen. Home has thrown a small spin on the ICS display unlock system by placing your profile picture on a small button at the bottom of the display, which can be moved in three directions – to the previous app you used, to the Facebook Messenger app, or to the app list. Yes, we had actually expected an option that would lead us to Instagram, but that is another story, perhaps for another update. Head to the apps on your device and you will see they have been rearranged across different screens. The primary one has all the apps on your device, and you can move the ones you use more often to the others by a simple drag and drop operation. Again, kind of neat. And just to remind you that below this hums the heart of Facebook, right on top of the app pages are options to post to Facebook – but that apart, this is a fairly normal Android interface.

Which, incidentally, can be jazzed up using the Chat Heads feature. Chat Heads are actually small bubble-like icons containing the profile picture of the sender that pop up on your display whenever someone sends you a message using Facebook Messenger. Tap on the picture and you will be able to see the message and respond to it. More usefully, you can actually long press on the people in your Facebook Messenger contacts list and keep Chat Heads of people you frequently message always on your display – they can be placed on one of the four corners of the display. So you could actually be reading Flipboard, and on seeing something you like, just tap on the Chat Head of a friend and send them a message about it – the Chat Heads will be visible irrespective of which app you are running, which is a bit of a mixed blessing, as sometimes we actually ended up tapping them when what we wanted to do was tap an option on the corner of the screen!

Yes, it is solely Facebook-centric at the moment but on the flip side, it does work rather smoothly and does not seem to hit battery life as hard as we had thought – our devices still lasted a day on a single charge and normal usage. We also can see Facebook addicts loving the Chat Heads feature, and honestly, we have developed a soft corner for the Cover Feed, which works more smoothly and is more dynamic in nature than some of the lock screen apps we have seen, although we would have loved to be able to control whose updates we would like seeing (we do have friends whose updates consist of endlessly shared status messages and pictures!). In fact, leave out the Cover Feed and Home comes across as pretty unobtrusive – Chat Heads can be accessed by anyone using the new FB Messenger and is not a Facebook Home exclusive. And we have seen no sign of those ads that had been talked about when Home was launched – we are not missing them one bit either.

All of which makes us think that Facebook Home is definitely worth trying out. We suspect that the app will get at least two more hefty updates before the year is out, and that those will daub your phone in richer FB colours than the current version does, but until then, Facebook Home is a must-have for FB addicts, and a handy app even for non-FB ones. No, we would not recommend taking up permanent residence there – at least not until we have more furniture and fixtures (read ‘related apps’) in there, but good enough for a short stay or dropping in from time to time!

Available from: Google Play
Price: Free

© Raju PP for Technology Personalized, 2013. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us, so we can take legal action immediately. If you are on Twitter you can follow me @rajupp! | Permalink |

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What surprises me is why his videos aren’t as popular as Gangnam Style? Okay, so it is music, people love music. What about Harlem Shake then? Okay, I get it. But why the video of two cats talking has more number of views on YouTube than his chef-d’oeuvre?

Some content will go viral, you find something cool on some web page, you share it with your friends, they share that with their friends, and the chain keeps on building. Once the snowball has started rolling, it will continue rolling. But this isn’t restricted to just video content. It is happening with almost every form of data you find on the internet. Let me give you another example, the one that appeals more to me.

A while ago, TheVerge ran a long piece on “For Amusement Only: the life and death of the American arcade“, and then Huffington Post featured the same piece titled “The Life And Death Of The American Arcade” where they put a short snippet of TheVerge’s article and a link to the source as well. This is customary; almost every publishing website links each other sites to drive more traffic to their content. Everything went fine, except, HuffPo’s piece made the top search result when you googled “the life and death of the American arcade”.

Joshua Topolsky, the editor-in-chief of the The Verge wasn’t happy with this. In his opinion, HuffPo was stealing The Verge’s thunder. The technical explanation of why this all happened, why HuffPo’s mirrored piece managed to get more traffic is Search Engine Optimization. In short, SEO is using smart keywords that match with what others might be searching (trend), and if your analysis is right, you will gain Google “juice”. While Joshua’s point of view and Twitter rant may look a little stroppy, at the same point, it does make some sense. If you are running a website whose primary income comes from ad revenue, this matters, because when any website passes on your content they get some share in your advert profit.

Having good content is not enough

No matter how cool and informative your content is, the platform you are on, the algorithms you use, your approach to marketing and several other factors help determine whether or not your material will attract large traffic. This is where Metcalf’s Law kicks in. Metcalf’s law says that the number of possible cross links in a network grow as the square of the peer computer increases. For as long as your content is worth sharing, it holds good for content virility as well. Problogger’s infographic suggests the following mantra for content success.

• The content must be undeniably hilarious, a comic relief if you will, helping you snitch a break off your busy schedule.
• Make an appeal to its audience. Unless the viewer will find a connection to the content, it is very unlikely that they will ever praise it.
• The content may have some social value inept in it – could be an embarrassing side of a cringe worthy moment, for a guilty pleasure.
• The content should not offend anyone, and speak the opinion of mass. The content could be stimulating and even risky for that matter, but it should be something that one doesn’t feel bad sharing.

Hire the right people

What’s the secret behind the success of marketing of movie studio 20th Century Fox, network carrier Virgin Mobile and the soft drink producer Pepsi? The answer is Mekanism. Mekanism is a creative agency which takes care of your brand’s advertisement, brand entertainment, and several social media programs. They promise to make your content viral, and unlike majority of their competitors, they make it happen. Forbes reported a fascinating story of their success. Where even after getting the desirable success, they kept on striving for more.

Besides this, one also needs to be sharp with the timing of the content delivery, and must know their audiences. Categorizing the content is equally important. Tag a contest, fanfare a giveaway, put enough visual content. Kiri Blakeley from Forbes shares a very interesting story of how she managed to gain 100,000 viewers on one her post with some strange luck. She argues how a specific kind of domain can help you drive good share of audience. But, 100 friends won’t be able to get you to a rich place. Your content will always end up being viewed by the same people. Nothing is going to happen unless you gain some real attention.

There are a few things which are in your hand and for the rest you can only pray or seek help from others. There are numerous services that will do anything to make your product rise and shine. They will take care of the traffic, they will share your pieces or content on larger platform. That momentum, that rise is very necessary.

Also, it won’t be really licentious of me to put this idea in your head. Believe it or not, at the verse of the interwebs, fake followers are being bought and sold. You can have paid organic traffic, and before they know it, they will find themselves lost in the awesomeness of your products. People are creating fake deceptive brand value for their products. And, once your product has scored the full house, get out of that deceptive aura – dispense with the formalities.

© Raju PP for Technology Personalized, 2013. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us, so we can take legal action immediately. If you are on Twitter you can follow me @rajupp! | Permalink |

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But truth be told, I am not exactly pleased with the idea. And it is not just a gut feel. Here are the eight reasons why I am not over the moon with Facebook Home:

1. Trying out an app that delivers a functionality is one thing. Trying out one that takes over your phone is quite another. Most people are wary of trying out launchers for the simple reason that they like the way their phone basically is. How many would like to supplant Sense or TouchWiz with Home, especially after they have got the hang of the former and made it a part of their lives? I am not sure I would.
2. Home will not only be home to your Facebook content, but also some advertising. No, the idea of having ads on my homescreen all the time does not exactly thrill me.
3. I have not tried it out yet, but from what I have seen, the app is going to be both a battery and RAM guzzler, churning out notifications and images. Do we need any more of those around, given the penchant of most Android devices to start slowing down after a while? And honestly, Facebook is more about seeing big pictures. Google Plus tried that and it did not really work, you know.
4. The fact that it is not available for the majority of Android devices is a major blow, especially after Zuckerberg claimed that the rationale for not making a Facebook phone was that it would reach a very small portion of FB users. Well, making the app available for six high-end handsets and one HTC First and that too initially in the US is sure not going to help the app reach most FB users either. If anything, it is going to fragment the Facebook experience, with different users getting different takes of the social network depending on their devices and apps. I am not sure that is a very healthy thing.
5. We kept hearing how Facebook addicts would love Facebook Home. There is just one problem with that theory – most addicts are not just addicted to the social network but also to the means through which they access it. I have seen those used to accessing FB on a BlackBerry or Android device struggle to use it on a PC. Will they just switch over straight to a whole new way of looking at Facebook, no matter how awesome that is? They might, but common sense indicates they will take their time converting – and that too IF the app is available on their Android devices (I cannot keep stressing how important that is).
6. Facebook might be THE social network, but it is by no means the only social network people use. Many people tweet, hand around resumes on LinkedIn, swap images on Flickr and literally hang out on Google+. Just how well Home integrates with these networks and apps remains to be seen, but it is very likely that they are all likely to be overshadowed by the big F. I am not too sure I would like that.
7. The idea of getting monthly updates for an app does not fill me with joy, to be honest. Yes, change is the only constant in the world of tech and constant improvement is to be applauded, but every month? I don’t know any other app which makes me do that. I am not looking forward to that to be honest.
8. All right, this is going to be touchy ground, but let me be blunt: Facebook’s track record has not really been sterling when it comes to making apps. My own experience of Facebook’s apps has been fair to middling and to be honest, I still think that the social network is at its best and most versatile within a computer’s browser. Of course, I would be delighted to see Zuckerberg and Co. prove me wrong, but…

Mind you, none of this is likely to stop thousands of people from downloading the Home app when it does hit Google Play on April 12. And as Tushar Kanwar pointed out on Twitter, the day is likely to go down in tech history as the one on which people asked for APK files of Home for their officially unsupported devices – I know I am going to be one of them (hey, I would love to be proved wrong and if Home turns out to be awesome, I would hate to miss out).

The big challenge for Zuckerberg and Co., however, is going to be ensuring that those who download the app actually use it to its fullest extent. If they do not, we might end up seeing that Facebook phone after all.

© Raju PP for Technology Personalized, 2013. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us, so we can take legal action immediately. If you are on Twitter you can follow me @rajupp! | Permalink |

The post Facebook ”Home, Sweet Home?” Not Quite appeared first on Technology Personalized.

And well, we must confess that it is one of the better looking “official” Twitter apps that we have seen on a tablet. Scratch that – it certainly is the best, outshining its Android and iOS counterparts that tend to focus more on substance than on style and do not actually reflect the OS they are running on (as a consequence of which iOS and Android users tend to hark to other apps for their Twitter fix but that is another story for another piece). Twitter for Windows 8 certainly does that. It is a small enough download at 2.6 MB, and as on other platforms, costs nothing. Installation is quick.

Nothing really seems to bounce out at you once you log in to the app. The format seems pretty standard with a single column showing the tweets of those you follow with a side panel on the left showing Home, @Connect, #Discover and Me (your profile). @Connect shows the tweets where you have been mentioned. And again, the layout seems basic. Uncluttered and lot of white space. Easy on the eye, but no real visual magic. That bit starts when you hit the #Discover button and suddenly Twitter switches into Windows 8’s swiping mode, letting you swipe between trending topics, follower activity and tweets. And shared links and images look awesome, with complete Web articles being displayed within the app itself. A quick note: all this happens when you use the app in landscape mode, which does seem Windows 8’s preferred mode.

There’s more: tap on a user or even head to the Me section to see your own profile. Once again you will be rewarded by a swipe to discover interface as you switch between basic details and statistics of the person, recent tweets, and images shared by the person. It does not sound like much, but take our word for it – it looks gorgeous on a Windows 8 large screen. You can also share information from any other app by just invoking the Charms bar, choosing the Share option and then opting for Twitter. And thankfully unlike some apps, you actually get a chance to edit the copy before sending it off. Finally, there is Snap view, where you pull your finger down from the tap of the app and when it becomes smaller, simply shift it to the right or the left of your display, where it becomes a single column affair, letting you work on the remainder of the screen on whatever app you want. Neat, we think. And there is support for live tiles and notifications, although we prefer just running the app by the side.

Yes, power Twitter users will complain about the lack of customization options (no settings button at all, would ye believe it) and the fact that they have to go delving inside the Me section to access DMs – Tweetdeck gives us them in a nice column by itself. Still all said and done, we cannot help but like Twitter’s official avatar on Windows 8. It is simple and elegantly designed, if not exactly overburdened in the feature department, and is very comfortable to work with, be it in full screen mode or tucked away on one of the sides of the screen. Good enough for it to go flying into our must-download apps list of Windows 8!

Available from: Windows Store
Price: Free

© Raju PP for Technology Personalized, 2013. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us, so we can take legal action immediately. If you are on Twitter you can follow me @rajupp! | Permalink |

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Some of the content-specific feeds included in the new design are:

• All Friends: shows every single post from ALL your friends in reverse chronological order.
• Music: Shows what your friends are listening to, new albums being released, and recommendations of artists you might like.
• Photos: Just photos from your friends and pages.
• Following: A revamp of the Pages feed that shows every post by Pages/People you Like.
• Close Friends: shows posts from friends added to the close-friends list just like before, but with bigger images and more details.

Photo albums have got another new design with more immersive experience. The links shared will have bigger previews making it easier to decide if you want to click it to read further or not. Checkins to places will now include a map and basic details about the place. Pinterest gets more love, as the posts shared from it will be more vivid. Posts shared by multiple friends in your timeline will have their faces next to it and clicking on their faces will let you know what they have to say about the post.

Mark Zuckerberg made it clear that Facebook intends to be your personal newspaper that allows users to not only give them the top stories in the news and also socially relevant and local content from friends and family around you. The new design is based on three major things:

• Richer stories that are visually engaging
• Choice of different feeds and dig into any topic you want
• Mobile consistency that shares the same experience across different platforms.

The mobile consistency has resulted in Facebook bringing a lot of design elements from phones and tablets onto the web. Mobile web elements like the sidebar-drawer UI and new stories alert have made it into the web experience as well.

The new News Feed goes live today, but will be rolled out in small batches over the next few weeks. Like the Graph search, you might not be able to get to see the redesigned News Feed immediately and might have to wait sometime. Adding yourself to the waitlist here https://www.facebook.com/about/newsfeed might accelerate the process.

© Raju PP for Technology Personalized, 2013. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us, so we can take legal action immediately. If you are on Twitter you can follow me @rajupp! | Permalink |

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It’s always nice to get money for free, right? What if I told you that you could get 10 dollars from Facebook itself? No, this isn’t a joke. and not a Facebook scam. I know that it’s not enough to buy the latest gadgets, but you’d still be able to buy beer for you and your friends. So, if you received any legal notice on behalf of Facebook, then you might be one of the lucky ones.

Apparently, a class action lawsuit (in plain English – this is when a group of people sue a certain company/person or defend it) was settled for $20 million, which is a lot of money, even for Facebook. You too can earn $10 from Facebook, but you need to hurry, as the deadline is on May 2.

Facebook owes us a small lunch

Facebook doesn’t want to go in court with this lawsuit and has offered $20 million to close it which means it could go bad for Facebook if it reaches the court. Zuckerberg and his team are in luck since the legal authorities have allowed Facebook to start paying the affected parties. And who exactly are those affected parties? Well, it could be you and me, IF we have been featured in a sponsored story before 3 December, 2012. Below is the legal statement – that you can also find here – that some users have already received:

Why all this mess started? Well, as BuzzFeed puts it:

The class action alleged that Facebook didn’t have the legal right to use members’ likenesses in Sponsored Posts. Facebook disagreed, obviously, but rather than risk litigation, decided to settle.

A simple math tells us that only 2 million users will be able to cash in the $10. If you’re lucky enough to be selected to get this little present, you will have to fill out a form on the FraleyFacebookSettlement website (shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes). But most likely, users from the United States are much more chances of getting selected.

This event highlights even more the importance of our online privacy  If you want to protect on such websites as Facebook, you should have a look at PrivacyFix. The fact that Facebook can be “put to order” is a great thing, it shows that users still have the power in their hands. We might not feel it straight away, but we are their main source of income, we are their products that they sell to advertising companies. And if we give them our membership, they should respect our rights, even if it all happens in a environment that we can’t touch.

Note: The emails are being sent from the ID legalnotice@facebookmail.com, but there are great chances of scamsters spoofing the email id, so beware!

© Raju PP for Technology Personalized, 2013. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us, so we can take legal action immediately. If you are on Twitter you can follow me @rajupp! | Permalink |

The post Would You Like $10 From Facebook? appeared first on Technology Personalized.

Although users can use just about any picture they want as a cover photo, most of the time, they will search for something that suits their moods or something that just looks awesome. And we’ve seen some awesome Facebook covers from inspired users, but for those who want the easy way out, or who do not possess the skills to modify photos in a professional program, there is a solution, and today we’ll be talking about it.

Facebook Cover Photo Makers

Yes, that’s right, there are lot of such websites on the web, and most of them offer free cover photos for users to use on their profiles. There are also websites that allow users to upload their own images and create their own unique design. There are thousands of images available on these websites, all very neatly categorized according to their content and style.

As you will notice, there are lots of websites for creating your own cover photos using pictures uploaded by you. Although these are pretty good tools, they only offer basic features and effects. All of them offer the possibility to add texts, graphics and backgrounds, but in terms of effects and manipulation, they are pretty basic. So, if you want to create your own Facebook cover photo, keep this in mind.

Top Facebook Cover Download Websites

Although these websites do not allow users to create their own designs, there do feature an impressive collection of cover photos ranging from abstract to almost any type of content. These pictures are the exact size that users need for their profiles, so no more cropping is necessary.

• Face Coverz
• My Profile Cover
• Coverize Me
• FB Cover Pix
• Trendy Covers
• Cover Photo Finder

Top Facebook Cover Generator Websites

These websites are in a way the upgraded versions of the download websites. These have the same gallery of cover photos, but they also have a Cover Generator feature where users can use the tools provided by the website to create their own custom cover photo. Also, they allow users to upload their own background pictures or graphics and create a custom design to fit into the Facebook cover photo panel, which they can then download to their computer or upload it directly to their Facebook profiles.

• Get-Covers
• My FB Covers
• First Covers
• Cover Photoz
• FB Cover Street
• Cover Canvas by The Site Canvas
• Page Covers

Using these Facebook cover makers will allow Facebook users to customize their profile in any way they see fit. Having at their disposal thousands of images and the possibility to create custom covers will let anyone have a unique Facebook profile. These tools are perfect for those with no experience in photo manipulation programs, like Photoshop, and they give the regular user the tools necessary to make their Facebook profile stand out.

© Raju PP for Technology Personalized, 2013. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us, so we can take legal action immediately. If you are on Twitter you can follow me @rajupp! | Permalink |

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The new Facebook calling feature, available at the moment only for US-based iPhone owners, relies on the classic VoIP concept of delivering the message. The system works pretty neat and it takes users only a couple of steps to set up a live conversation.

Facebook Free-Call System: A small piece of the puzzle

In order to make a phone-call using the well-known social service and to avoid direct carrier charges, iPhone owners can simply launch the dedicated Facebook Messaging application, open a conversation with a partner, tap the “i” icon in the upper-right corner and go for a “”Free Call”. From point on, a pop-up message will arrive on the secondary terminal and if the user accepts, a stable link will be created between the two.

The concept is pretty simple and it’s something what we expected of Facebook, especially after launching their home-made search engine, and it relies on pure Internet connection. The advantage of this method is that users can avoid carrier taxes for voice, but if their plans lack a sufficient amount of data left free for consuming, bigger taxes might apply. At this moment, there are no testing results revealing how much traffic a call will generate. To avoid this downside as well, a Wi-Fi connection is highly recommended.

Another impediment lies within the compatibility section, where those wishing to take advantage of the new feature may only do so between smartphones with the Messaging application installed. Facebook has declared that users logged on the site cannot be queried and that soon, an Android and BlackBerry versions will spree. The company remained silent about Windows Phone. This is somewhat similar to BBM7′s free voice calling option.

The new feature is already available on US-based iPhones, and should extend oversees in the months to come.

© Raju PP for Technology Personalized, 2013. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us, so we can take legal action immediately. If you are on Twitter you can follow me @rajupp! | Permalink |

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Available on the Windows Store, MINE for Facebook (yes, that is the complete name of the app) is a 1.84 MB download and installs without any hitches. Once you have logged into the app using your Facebook username and password, you get a screen with two sections – Your Personalized Feeds on the upper portion, and Notifications below them. The Personalized Feeds area has three sub-heads: Your news feed, Status and picture feed and the quaintly named Top friend link and info feed.

Of course, you can just let these be the way they were and the app will serve up your Wall, status and picture updates of your friends and so on, or you can make the most of the app, roll up your sleeves, and sit down and tweak these feeds. Just access the menu by pulling down the upper portion of the app and go to the ‘Manage Your Custom Feeds’’ option. Here you can change the name of the feeds if you wish and even specify what kind of updates (videos, pictures, links, etc.) and which friend’s updates you wish to include under that head. It is a simple, neat touch and actually helps those who have stacks of friends – some more important, and others less so.

What, however, really makes the app rock is the fact that it brings most of Facebook’s functionality in a typically Windows 8 layout. So you have your Wall (which normally shows up in the feed of your choice, depending on your customisation), which you can navigate by swiping from one side to another. Just tap an entry to see it in full form and see comments and likes, and of course, add your own if you wish. You can also access your groups and events if you wish. You can give the app permission to send you notifications, irrespective of the app you are using, and see live updates on its tile on the Windows 8 homescreen. All of it in best Window 8 style, with lots of white space, large images and clear text. There are no ads or friend suggestions to muck up your viewing space.

Yes, it is not perfect. Videos that were shared off YouTube tended to open up in the browser, we could find no way of sharing someone’s status or of sending messages to a contact, and well, those who love Facebook’s apps and games will have to do without them, but still, all said and done, we must admit that we found MINE for Facebook extremely useful for keeping track of activity on our social network. It works smoothly and looks gloriously uncluttered. For everything else, there’s the browser after all!

Available from: Windows Market
Price: Free

© Raju PP for Technology Personalized, 2012. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us, so we can take legal action immediately. If you are on Twitter you can follow me @rajupp! | Permalink |

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Facebook’s the second most visited website in the world but it’s not making as much money as one would expect them to. And after a failed Initial Public Offering, Zuckerberg and his colleagues are looking for inventive ways to monetize the biggest social network in the world. And these ways don’t have anything to do with advertising.

Facebook looks desperate to make more money

If Facebook’s previous ideas of making money didn’t make me raise eyebrows, this one does. Apparently, the Palo Alto company is testing a service where sending out messages to persons you don’t know could cost $1. At first, it seems just like a very bad idea, right? Who’s going to pay that money? But I think Facebook’s being very slick with this one.

Even now, you can send messages to almost everybody on Facebook, provided that they didn’t set restricted privacy settings. So, to a certain extent, it doesn’t really adds up – you can’t befriend a certain person (she won’t accept your friendship or other reasons) but you can send her messages. Facebook’s experiment (because it’s not yet official) will protect those that don’t want to receive messages from strangers and will put a barrier in front of those who’re just “trolling around”.

Fighting spam or just a pretext to get your credit card?

After all, if it’s a very important message, you can pay $1 to send it, right? If not, then it simply means that it’s just not that important. And here are more scenarios where this update could come in handy for some persons:

Facebook argues it would be useful if you were, for example, planning a surprise party for a friend through Facebook. Four of the five people you are inviting to this party are friends with you as well, but one is not. You could make sure the fifth person gets the invite in their Inbox, instead of the “other” folder, by paying the $1. Additionally, there are people — recruiters, job seekers, public relations folks or  journalists who use Facebook to network.

But, as it makes sense for Facebook to implement this feature, it doesn’t seem “correct” from another point of view. Right now, if you’ve set up privacy settings right, messages from strangers will go to your “Other” label on Facebook, thus, protecting you form unwanted spam. If such a feature will be enabled, Facebook’s system will assure senders that their messages get delivered to the destination. So, it will reduce “mass spam”, such as messages about Viagra or Rolex but it will open the gates to your inbox for a buck.

Facebook’s not free anymore?

Many of you have probably heard about the “Promote” tool. I did but I never imagined it’s THAT scary until I tried it myself. You can either pay with the existing Credits balance or directly with your mobile phone, credit card or PayPal balance. Why would you do that? Well, on Facebook, we all know how you can catch up a bigger audience – by placing higher in news feeds what you shared. So, if your friend or you have paid to promote something, it will appear the first or amongst the first in their news feed, being labeled as “Sponsored”. You’ll also get a receipt for your payment.

But this tool is causing frustration amongst users all over the world. It makes you feel that you don’t own something that should be rightfully yours. I sometimes get the feeling that the guys at Facebook think their product will last forever. I’m 100% sure it will last much, much longer than any other social network, but they can’t keep on doing this – not giving a damn on what we think. And it’s not just the money but also the privacy. C’mon, is it not enough that you have 1 BILLION members, how can you be that greedy? Mahesh hits the nail on the head:

Look at Apple – they went after profit and nothing else. Stopped giving better value. The iPhone 5 is a thinner, longer KLPD. And they’re somewhere on the road to being screwed. You know what, you’re further down that path than they are. So once again – I’m not going to pay to get this post out. Maybe my friends will see it. Maybe some will share it. Maybe some won’t.

So, more friends you have, more money you have to pay out of your pocket to be sure they see what you shared. As I think about this more and more, I realize that Facebook’s not being run anymore only by Zuckerberg. Maybe I’ve been influenced by The Social Network movie, but I used to think Mark didn’t care too much for money, but for the success of his company. The IPO itself, and the period after it, were the biggest mistakes Facebook did. And this rush for money isn’t doing them any good.

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