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Would You Pay $100 to Message Mark Zuckerberg?

To send Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg a personal message, some users will have to lay down a hard-earned $100, as part of the social network's efforts to curb spam.

By Stephanie Mlot
January 11, 2013
$100 to Message Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook

How much would you pay to send a personal note to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg?

Facebook is offering some users the option to pay $100 to have their private messages land in Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook inbox rather than his "Other" folder, where Facebook messages go to die.

A Facebook spokeswoman said in a statement that the social network is "testing some extreme price points to see what works to filter spam." She explained that the $100 fee is part of the social network's new experimental feature, announced in December, that allows select users to pay $1 to send messages to people outside of their social connections.

"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," Facebook said in a statement last month.

Facebook Mark Zuckerberg $100 Mashable

The $1 option is being presented to only a "small number" of users in the U.S., and will limit people to one paid message per week to start. Once a non-friend responds to the message, there will be no further charge for the same conversation.

If the recipient moves your note to the Other or Spam folders, though, all bets are off and not even $100 will open contact again.

The Other folder — unknown to most Facebook users — made headlines over the summer when a bug within the API for certain mobile devices accidentally synched a user's @facebook.com email address rather than their primary address. Normally, if you are not connected to a person on Facebook, any message that you send to them will be routed to this "Other" folder in their Facebook Messages inbox. Most Facebook users, however, don't actually know this folder exists, so messages sent there often go unread.

As a result, having the option to pay to have messages routed to someone's inbox might be an appealing feature for someone who wanted to contact a Facebook user (or Zuckerberg) for business purposes.

Mashable suggested that the $100 payment option pops up only for users who are not one of Zuck's 16 million followers. But a quick PCMag test revealed that that is not always the case — two staffers who do not follow Zuckerberg sent him a message, and it was whisked away (presumbly to that "Other" folder) with no $100 payment prompt.

For more from Stephanie, follow her on Twitter @smlotPCMag.

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About Stephanie Mlot

Contributor

Stephanie Mlot

B.A. in Journalism & Public Relations with minor in Communications Media from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP)

Reporter at The Frederick News-Post (2008-2012)

Reporter for PCMag and Geek.com (RIP) (2012-present)

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