Facebook Charging $100 to Message Mark Zuckerberg | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Charging $100 to Message Mark Zuckerberg

mashable.com

57 pointsrustc67 comments

I think this is really cool. The price point will definitely deter random spammers who just want to talk to Mark. But it is low enough for someone who wants to reach out to Mark to be feasible. If I had a brilliant idea I wanted Mark to know about, I'd be stoked. There is no guarantee that he will read it, but if someone paid 100$ to message him, he might be intrigued.

Most likely he has some folks to review those messages, and bring a (select) few to his attention.

> If I had a brilliant idea I wanted Mark to know about, I'd be stoked.

(...)

> Zuck: People just submitted it.

> Zuck: I don't know why.

> Zuck: They "trust me"

> Zuck: Dumb fucks.

That quote is taken a bit out of context methinks.

As much as I might dislike or distrust the man, and might consider $100 worth the chance to send a one-off drunken insult, I can see that intended as self deprecating humour. I do it about myself all the time: "what sort of fool would trust the likes of me with that" said to the person who has just indeed trusted me with what-ever "that" is, for instance.

This really is a hilarious play when you take his reputation into account.

You want to pay Mark $100 to take your idea?

To listen to it. Comment too pedantic.

I don't think you know what pedantic means.

At one point if you tried to message Tom on MySpace it would take you in to a non-standard UX flow where it would try to nudge you in messaging their support people instead.

And knowing how clear Facebook tries to be (sarcasm) - they will surely let you know he might not be reading your $100 message or even hear about it, if that's the case.

I think some credits-based system (Quora?) based on quality of some kind of internet activity would be better. I agree on the use of scarcity to remove noise from clogged communication channels, but there are fairer ways to do scarcity.

$100 is nothing for me (and astronomically more of a nothing for Zuck) if there's a career benefit, but it's a substantial amount of money for most people in the world.

Yeah, ideally a system like this would scale in relation both to the desirability of the recipient and the wealth of the sender, though not completely for the latter - wealth should always be some form of advantage.

$100 to send, and how much to guarantee that young Mr. Zuck actually READS the message? :)

Why would he bother to read them? I certainly wouldn't read anything a random facebook user sent me. Let alone if my time was worth what his time is worth.

Besides, what of interest could he possibly be sent?

I definitely wouldn't call someone paying $100 to send him a message a random Facebook user. A certain type of Facebook user yes, but the randomness is coming from a very small segment of Facebook's overall audience.

Steve Jobs' one sentence (if even that) replies to people who sent him emails are a fun part of his legacy at Apple. Maybe Zuck is trying to strengthen his image as czar of Facebook, powerful but still social.

Because he's charging to send them. It's not nice charging $100 to send you a message and ignoring it.

> It's not nice charging $100 to send you a message and ignoring it.

And god knows that a business guy like Zuck would never do anything that's not nice.

In fact I think it works the other way around, and it's a very good idea. "If someone is willing to spend $100 to text me, they probably have a good reason to do it. Maybe it's worth reading..."

You're kidding, right?

"Dear Mark, I am writing because I have a great business opportunity for you... ...

...

... and that's why you should buy out my revenue-positive minimum viable product so we can pivot towards disrupting even greater markets in the social space.

Sincerely, Every startup in the world"

Yes. I'm sure it's a great idea and only the highest quality of spam will be sent his way. Please forgive my cynicism ;)

I would much rather prefer $100 per message spam than free to send spam.

As for a point of order, this wouldn't be considered spam anyway:

A message is Spam only if it is both Unsolicited and Bulk.

Unsolicited Email is normal email (examples: first contact enquiries, job enquiries, sales enquiries)

Bulk Email is normal email (examples: subscriber newsletters, customer communications, discussion lists)

http://www.spamhaus.org/consumer/definition/

Thanks for the entirely pedantic and useless correction. Assuredly you have heard "spam" used colloquially to refer to unwanted messages, and not just the narrow definition of "unsolicited bulk" email.

Have a nice day.

Linkedin Actually guarantees that they will read your message, or they will give your money back.

You know, if LinkedIn sent a percentage of that money on to the user, I'd be more likely to read the recruiting spam.

They guarantee that you will receive a response from an InMail within X days, or you get your InMail credit back.

I'm curious, how is this different from normal messages?

Edit: after thinking about it, I guess the fact you're paying to message someone would impress the recipient, thus enticing them to reply.

They call it 'InMail'. The difference is that the recipient has to make an action in the message, or your money returns. You have some InMails according to the plan you chose to pay.

By read, means somebody clicked on that page?

By read they say that somebody read and decided not to respond. After somedays, they will give you your credit back.

How does linkedin know?

according to [1], Mark Zuckerberg makes $310.67 per second... so $100 will buy you under one third of a second of his time... I hope you are not expecting a long reply.

[1] http://www.best-reviewer.com/how-much-money-does-mark-zucker...

Maybe when Facebook was still private and rising in value? I don't see where that income lies today. His salary is slightly over $1mm and $FBs value isn't shooting up anymore.

His salary is less than "$2,147,483,647 a year" quoted on that page.

Now this would be great if I could turn this on for my inbox and set the price.

And you get 70%.

Slightly off topic but I'd easily value communicating with my peers at $100. I have the good fortune of working with smart people who, despite the importance of their own projects, are willing to help me if needed. The time of others has value and I think it should be used accordingly.

This reminds me a lot of the scheme that conference organizers set up. They might charge $5,000 for you to attend because that way you know you'll be with other high caliber people. They use money as the filter and just happen to profit as a result.

> This reminds me a lot of the scheme that conference organizers set up. They might charge $5,000 for you to attend because that way you know you'll be with other high caliber people.

Spoiler alert: Those things are complete scams. The conference organizers pay for some big names to show up, and then fleece the people who have $$ but no power or access.

Keen Facebook observers will recognize this as a variant on the $1 pay-to-message plan that the social network has been experimenting with for months.

Welp, time to get all of my family's email addresses and close my FB account. Really the only thing I use it for at this point, and not valuable enough to pay any amount of money per message.

I don't like siding with Mashable on many issues, but I really hope FB isn't this hungry for new revenue streams.

EDIT: Welp, now I need to friend my family members to message them for free.

If I understand correctly, you only pay that much to go to the inbox if you aren't a friend with the person. Friends message friends for free.

It's actually pretty clever, I think. It's too high for unsolicited spam, but it's a trivial amount for the very rare instance of wanting someone you're not a friend of to read it.

Ah, thanks for the clarification. This makes sense, and I think was actually mentioned in the Mashable article. My mistake.

"now I need to friend my family members to message them for free"

If only there were some way to communicate using computers that did not require the services of a company like Facebook. Something using open protocols, where anyone could write servers and clients, that used the internet to communicate freely. I guess I'm just a dreamer.

The plan is to charge users money to message folks outside of their friends list, not monetize two friends chatting.

At the moment. Previously this $100 per message scheme would also have seemed nuts. FB is under immense pressure to live up to its valuation, I expect these sorts of unsettling money grabs to continue for quite some time.

I could imagine this would be worth it, on the guarantee that you get a personal, thoughtful reply. Not "ok" or "no".

This is similar to the telco model where they charge texts and phone calls. Charging for communication is really the only way I see Facebook ever hitting its IPO valuation. This example is a bit extreme, but if they can figure out how to charge for the communication aspect, they may have a nice business.

I'll pay him $100 to stop all these drama stories about Mark Zuckerberg.

It's seem like every now and then I hear stories about his sister, or how he dupe some guy for facebook, got duped in paying $1 billion for instagram, and now this.

Seriously, he's like a drama queen.

How about someone make a marketplace for this exact sort of thing? "Contact Y for $X now!"

There was a start-up here in the UK working on this, can't remember the name. The model was a bit different as the money went to charity of the contactee's choosing. So they themselves didn't make money off of it, it was just a filter to weed out time wasters. The thinking was that this also made the busy important contactee more likely to take it seriously.

Not sure what happened with it though, this was several years ago

Clarity.fm uses phone calls in a similar idea.

Someone has built that and posted it here a few weeks ago, I can't for the life of me remember the name though. To get around transaction laws they had "credits" though, so you couldn't cash out which sorta killed the idea for me. I'll try and find the post.

transaction laws? You can't send someone money to talk to them?

I can't find the link now, I've been through every Show HN from the last 3 weeks and I can't find it. I distinctly remember it said something along the lines of, "due to transaction laws your coins can only be donated to charity" or something. Maybe that was how they make money; people forget about their "coins" and "charity". Hopefully someone else remembers it, all I can remember is:

Weird name. 3 founders. Video presentation at some sort of incubator (maybe techstars?) and they had a... brown website? I think it was brown.

This might be what you're talking about https://www.gramicon.com/pages/howto, it was posted on HN a while ago

http://oneleap.to/ - social enterprise spin on the idea, you pay to charity to get your message through.

I think that's what he's trying to set up, because there's no way this is worth his time if he's actually being thoughtful about each message.

Ah, ic. Maybe this is a way of beta-testing a larger roll out?

Brilliant, wonder how much $$ this feature will bring in.

brings a whole new definition to "money talks"

This is why their stock is going to sore. :)

Doesn't work for my account :/

I plan to message him to complain about the price.

Insanity prevails.

Small price really and he probably reads them, unless a lot of people pony up that $100. He's the founder /CEO or the world's most used site and worth north of $20 Billion...

His paper worth maybe not his value (IMHO). He got lucky and his team pulled Facebook through the rough times till the network effect kicked in and everyone had to be on Facebook.

He's got 1 hit and I rather pay another guy with multiple hits (and failures) that $300/hr.

I want the experience not a lottery ticket.

" He got lucky and his team pulled Facebook through the rough times till the network effect kicked in and everyone had to be on Facebook."

Lucky for 8 years with all those decisions and all those competitors? Luck alone isn't it

@tubbo (dead), Mark is actually worth more than Jobs was, mainly because most of his (Jobs) wealth was in Disney shares and the $2-3 billion worth of Apple shares were paid to him. If Jobs kept hold of his founding shares then yeah, Jobs might of became richer than Gates, but he sold all but 1 share when he was forced out.

I was going to say, presuming that they guarantee delivery $100 would be cheap to get an audience for a pitch of one form or another. Still, I suspect his Facebook account is at least monitored (if not primarily run by) his admin - which might blunt the utility.

I would be highly surprised if he lets other people manage his Facebook account. He seems to firmly believe that the type of social interaction that facebook facilitates is the way of the future. By not using it himself, he would be admitting that maybe its just a waste of time... which is something that I doubt that he would let himself do.

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