Would you pay real money to message UK celebs on Facebook? Because now you can!
How much would you pay to get the ear of one of your favourite celebrities? Facebook are banking on it being a pretty penny, today beginning the roll out of their pay-to-message-celebs program to UK users too.
Launching initially in the US back in December, it’s now letting users in 36 other countries pay a premium to send direct messages to notable persons.
Celebrities will be graded on their popularity and have an appropriate per-message price set by a Facebook algorithm. The cost to message Olympic diver Tom Daley for instance has been set at £10.68, while author Salmon Rushdie costs £10.08. Paying for a message has your correspondence sent to the celebrity’s main inbox, rather than be relegated to the dreaded “Other” inbox into which few dare to venture.
“It is being tested among a very small percentage of users,” a Facebook rep told The Guardian.
“There is no set timescale. It depends on what happens, what feedback we get as to whether it is rolled out nationally. We are testing a number of price points in the UK and other countries to establish the optimal fee that signals importance. This is still a test and these prices are not set in stone.”
Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg clearly think his time is worth top-dollar; it costs $100 (£61) to message him using the new service.
