I personally do not like getting messages on Facebook. Given I have my profile linked here on IMGrind I get several friend requests and multiple messages daily from complete strangers. All from “old friends” wanting to get involved with making money online to other companies wanting to form a business relationship. I get so many messages that I pretty much have to ignore them because it wouldn’t be possible (or a good use of time) to reply to them all. For business, I use LinkedIN as I’m able to quickly view someone’s profile and see if they mean business or not. Apparently Facebook is aware of the problem and have rolled out an inbox filtering system.

The new system has two different options:

Basic Filtering (default)
If you select Basic Filtering, you’ll see mostly messages from friends and people you may know (for example, friends of friends) in your Inbox. People who had the previous setting set to “friends of friends” or “everyone” will have Basic Filtering on.

Strict Filtering
If you select Strict Filtering, you’ll see mostly messages from friends in your Inbox. People who had the previous setting set to “friends” will have “Strict Filtering” on.

With filters, the following types of messages may reach your Inbox that before would not:

• Someone using Messenger for Android, who is not on Facebook but has your contact info in their phone, wanted to send you a message
• A friend of a friend wanted to include you in a message about a party along with some of your mutual friends
• A friend wanted to send a message to your @facebook.com address

Facebook already has separated messages into two different folders: Inbox and Other. Your Inbox is where the majority of your messages from friends or friends of friends go. The Other folder is where messages from people you mostly don’t know go (mine is very full).

Now here is where things get interesting. How much would you pay, that’s right pay, to message someone on Facebook that you’re not friends with? My answer is a big fat zero because I will either add you as a friend or reach out another way. As a “test” they’re allowing a small number of people the option to pay to have a message routed to the Inbox rather than the Other folder. My initial question is how much? For whatever reason I cannot find the specific dollar amount on the official announcement but AllThingsD is reporting the cost as $1 per message.

Facebook goes on to say that, “several commentators and researchers have noted that imposing a financial cost on the sender may be the most effective way to discourage unwanted messages and facilitate delivery of messages that are relevant and useful.”

Given their poor stock performance I know they’re looking to increase revenue but I really don’t think they plan on making anything substantial from messages. As I said above, I would never pay money to message someone on the site. If they’re that important they’ll have another means to contact them including LinkedIN, Twitter, or an email address. I do feel though this will discourage spammers as it wouldn’t make sense to pay $1 per message.

What do you think? Would you ever pay to message someone you don’t know on Facebook?