Until now, paying to promote 'stories' on Facebook has been the preserve of businesses with 'fan' pages. The premise has always been simple - got an event or an announcement you need the world to see? Pay to advertise it.
Facebook's 'promoted stories' for business pages work in a Pay-Per-Click manner similar to that which you would use to advertise on Google and can be a powerful tool for companies trying to increase the number of Likes they have on a page or attempting to get people to sign up to a newsletter, attend an event, or purchase from an online shop.
But now, normal users can pay to promote a story too.
Got a birthday to announce? A party you want to make sure your friends attend? When posting a status, users can now follow this up by clicking a 'promote' button and paying a small fee to ensure that their chosen story appears at the top of their friends' news feeds.
The feature could be particularly useful to those of us who allow subscribers (viewers who we are not directly friends with) to view our public posts as well as our friends, or business owners looking to increase the exposure of an event they have on a business page that friends or family might not be following.
Initially, it doesn't seem too expensive. The first post I made offered me the chance to promote it at the top of my friends newsfeeds for just £2.01, but a lot of concern is being mooted by users as Facebook seeks to find new ways to increase its revenue.
"It's Free And Always Will Be" says the website when you go to log in or sign up but, with a billion active users, the company is seeking to extract as much from those members as it can as business users begin to question the return on investment they are seeing from advertising on Facebook.
With a Facebook status having a typical 'life' of less than two and a half hours, for many of us what we say on the social networking site is being missed by our friends. By paying to guarantee our friends can see it we know our news is getting out there - but to what cost?
Promoting a status could potentially annoy users as it becomes apparent our friends are paying to ensure we see what they have to say and Facebookers could vote in vast numbers by logging off, a move Google would accept with glee as they look for any opportunity they can to increase membership of their own social networking site, Google Plus. Worse, they could simply choose to block or "unfriend" us. The shame!
Perhaps, then, Facebook have missed an opportunity: as a Facebook user, I don't want to pay to ensure my friends and family get to see a picture of my children in their Christmas play; but for businesses, 'promoting' posts can be a complex and costly exercise, configuring adverts, pay-per-click rates and daily limits.
If, however, we could pay a small, one-off fee to ensure that particular stories, events and so on appear at the top of newsfeeds for people who already Like our business page with a simple, one-click solution, many more would be prepared to pay to advertise on the site.
So, Facebook, heads up: keep the site free for your vast database of daily users, and make advertising more simple and cost effective for the businesses. You might find you get more take-up from those who have eschewed advertising with you in the past....