Facebook Wants You To Pay To Promote Your Own Posts

To some it may seem a bit narcissistic to want to force your friends to read all of your social media updates. However to Facebook its a new money making opportunity. Today the social media giant announced that it is turning on its "promoted posts" feature for U.S. users. The new, which has been in testing overseas, allows users pay to highlight their own posts on their friends' news feeds.

So how does Facebook Promoted Posts Work?

Lets say you have something important to get out there like a birthday party, anniversary , engagement announcement or whatever you feel is important for all your Facebook friends to see. With the Facebook Promoted Posts feature you would pay Facebook a small fee of $7 for each post you want to highlight. These posts would then stay near the top of your friends' and subscribers' news feeds for a longer period of time than a traditional post so they would be much more likely to see it.

"Every day, news feed delivers your posts to your friends," Doshi wrote. "Sometimes a particular friend might not notice your post, especially if a lot of their friends have been posting recently and your story isn't near the top of their feed. When you promote a post – whether it’s wedding photos, a garage sale, or big news – you bump it higher in news feed so your friends and subscribers are more likely to notice it."

Once you promote a post, it will be marked "Sponsored" and Facebook will provide you with tracking features so you'll have a general idea of how many more views your posts has gotten. the new service might be a great way to spread the word about upcoming events or it might just be a new way to annoy your friends. Either way the posts might look a bit like ads or spam so if you use the service expect a bit of feedback from your friends.