Facebook tests paid messages to strangers ...

How much would you pay to contact a stranger? Facebook is sprucing up its messaging system, and the most interesting change is a move to charge people to send a message to someone outside their network.

Most important messages go straight to your inbox on Facebook. But there's a second class of messages, including potential spam and notes from people not in your network, that the site's algorithms deem "less relevant."

These unlucky missives are dropped in the little-known "Other" folder, where they will often spend the remainder of their digital existence unseen, unread and unloved.

Facebook is now testing a solution to help messages avoid this limbo, the company announced in a blog post Thursday. People can pay to circumvent the dreaded "Other" folder and have their messages show up directly in the recipient's inbox. The cost to send one message will be a dollar, according to AllThingsD.

In a post announcing the changes, Facebook points out that this could be helpful for people who want to contact someone about a job or reach out to anyone else they may not have a personal connection to. Charging could also help cut down on unwanted spam, according to Facebook.

"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," says the post.

The "inbox delivery test" will be available only to select people using Facebook in the U.S. for now. Companies won't have access to the feature at this time, and people are limited to one paid outgoing message a week to minimize abuse.

The social network is also rolling out new filtering options for the inbox. If you select Basic Filtering, the usual messages from friends and people in your extended network will go to the inbox. With Strict Filtering, it will be "mostly" limited to messages from friends.

The update also allows members to receive messages from the Messenger for Android app, a mutual friend throwing a party and anyone with your @facebook.com e-mail address.

Facebook is constantly trying to find new revenue streams, testing out services such as paying to promote posts and Facebook Gifts. The pay message option is being tested out for a few months, but if it is popular, it could be an interesting way for the site to address spam and make some money at the same time.

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Google vs Facebook ...

2011 was a good year for Facebook. The social network was adding 100 million users every few months. It was on track for an IPO valued as high as $100 billion -- despite a dispirited stock market. And, perhaps most impressively, it had its archrival Google on the run.

Facebook (FB) was hiring Google's (GOOG) top engineers and threatening to siphon off its ad revenue. Significantly, Facebook was forcing Google to redesign its sites to be more social -- that is, more Facebook-like. There is no clearer sign you're eating your rival's lunch than the sight of them emulating you.

Of course, 2012 has been far crueller to Facebook. User growth stalled in its home market, and revenue growth disappointed as well. Its IPO was, by one measure, the biggest flop in Wall Street history. And last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg indicated that the company might introduce a search engine to drive new revenue.

More importantly, neither search nor social networking is an inherently superior business model. People flocked to social sites like Facebook and Twitter because they were a great way to discover new diversions through their friends and contacts. But it didn't make search less popular. It just added to the flow of content people get from the web. So it was inevitable that Google and Facebook would move into each other's core businesses.

In fact, the notion that search was dying and that the future of the web lay in social networks is itself starting to look outdated. Yes, people may spend many more hours on a social network than in a search box, but they also spend much less time bothering to click ads. We go to social networks to find people. We go to search boxes to find answers. So search ads -- despite warnings of the demise of search -- have continued to do very well.

In light of the rivalry that has emerged between the two companies, Facebook's plans to push harder into search may appear like an embarrassing capitulation. But just as Page was intent on moving into social to strengthen its overall offerings, Zuckerberg sees search as one more revenue stream to feed into its future growth. And given Facebook's lackluster stock performance so far, it seems not a bad.

Nor would adding a search engine be the only move that Facebook has copied from traditional web advertising. Several months ago, Facebook Exchange launched, letting ad networks use the browsing histories of users to target display ads next to their Facebook news feeds. Facebook Exchange, which works a lot like Google's Ad Exchange, showed early signs of improving ad-click rates in its beta program.

Facebook and Google also compete in several other areas, with Facebook Photos taking on Google's Picasa and Facebook Messaging aping GTalk. And both have made heavy moves into an even more archaic form of web advertising -- the hoary old display ad, introduced nearly two decades ago.

According to a recent report from eMarketer, both Facebook and Google will see display-ad revenue grow this year, although Google will grow faster to 15.4% of the display-ad market from 13.5% last year. Facebook will grow to 14.4% of the market from 14.1% last year. By 2014, eMarketer estimates, Google will control 21.2% of the market and Facebook 15.5%.

But efforts like Facebook Exchange and the mobile ad network the company began testing last week could give Facebook a bigger piece of the pie. And now it's getting serious about search ads as well. Taken together, these initiatives help support the Facebook bulls who say the stock is attractively priced right now. But turning its stock price around will mean moving deeper into Google's home turf.

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How parents, kids interact on Facebook... ( Read More)

As they move from their early teens to their late teens, kids no longer want to be pals with Mom and Dad. Teenage boys are much less likely than girls to initiate conversations with their parents. And moms baby their sons.

Not exactly news flashes, you say? But we're not talking about real life here, exactly. We're talking about Facebook.

The world's largest social network released new data about how parents and their children interact online. But the findings, from Facebook's data science team, also illustrate how personal interactions on Facebook can mirror those in the so-called real world.

Who friends whom: More than 65% of friendships between 13-year-olds and their parents are initiated by the child. But the older the teenager gets, the less likely he or she is to be the one sending the friend request. By the time kids are in their early to mid-20s, their parents are initiating friend requests with them 60% of the time.

As kids grow into their 30s and 40s, however, they begin friending their parents more often again.

"This overall trend follows the rough arc of children seeking distance from their parents as they prepare to leave the nest, and then gradually gravitating back as they accomplish their own milestones in life," says the blog post.

Who talks to whom: Moms and dads initiate parent-child conversations more often than their teenage kids. For daughters, this imbalance evens out by the time they hit 30 and are messaging their parents as often as they receive messages in return. Sons, however, however, take twice as long -- until age 60 -- to come around.

What they say: The data team studied hundreds of thousands of public Facebook messages between parents and children to identify the words and phrases that appeared most often. Based on the results, Mom and Dad are very proud of their kids.

Among the most common phrases from parents: "I'm so proud, "all my heart," "well done," "proud of you" and "call me."

Moms and dads use language much differently when messaging with sons, though. Mothers preferred endearments like "my handsome son" and "my little boy," while dads used profanity and words like "buddy" and "dude."

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Facebook got problems with his new Facebook Messenger for Android ...

Facebook has started to roll out a new version of its Messenger app for Android that only requires a name and a phone number, not an actual Facebook account, to sign up.

Although the new Facebook Messenger app is only available in a handful of countries for now--Australia, India, Indonesia, South Africa and Venezuela--it will eventually roll out to the United States and elsewhere, allowing users to chat with their phone contacts even if they're not using Facebook.

This news has set the tech world atwitter with proclamations that the new Messenger is an assault on the lowly text message (includingone such proclamation from Facebook itself).

It's a nice thought, at least. Given that a single text to your neighbor can cost more than a data transmission from Mars, who wouldn't relish the idea of wireless carriers getting their comeuppance? In reality, though, standard SMS has a lot going for it, and will likely weather all kinds of assaults, especially one from Facebook.

For one thing, Facebook Messenger faces the same adoption hurdle as other Internet-based messaging apps like WhatsApp and Viber: It requires a conscious decision not to use traditional SMS.

With Facebook Messenger, you must first consider whether the recipient has Facebook installed, and is set up to receive notifications for new messages. Then, you must commit to using the Messenger app instead of your phone's built-in SMS functionality. Once you do that, the conversation is locked into Facebook unless you have one of the select Android phones that can integrate regular text messages.

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