After receiving a message yesterday to say the king of social networking sites is shortly to start charging, I ask myself will I bother in future?
For me one of the attractions of sites like Facebook and Twitter is that it's free. Call me mercenary, but if I were to email the friends I have on those sites, mail them pictures etc then I would be able to do it for nothing.
I was a trifle peeved (to put it mildly) last night then, when I received an invitation from a Facebook friend, inviting me to become a Fan of the group:
NO, I WILL NOT PAY £3.99 A MONTH TO USE FACE BOOK FROM JULY 9TH 2010!
With some 63,500 members at the time of writing, a few other people are fans of the revolution too.
I seem to remember the forerunner to online social networking, Friends Reunited, started charging after a while. This effectively tolled the death nell of their popularity and members left them in droves (including myself). I hear they no longer charge, but for them that's a concession too late.
I realise Twitter and Facebook are increasingly by businesses (by The Best Of for a start!) and for commercial gain, and can see why the site owners might want to cash in on what has so far been a free marketing service. However I don't think it fair to charge Joe Blogger for the privilege of keeping in touch with a few chums.
I therefore propose if they must charge, charge only the commercial users, not the social ones.
Or frankly, I amongst many others, will leave and find somewhere else to socialise.
There is however a Facebook Blog article from over a year ago, when they assure their readers they are NOT about to start charging. So who knows what's going on, but it's certainly sparked a lot of interest if you Google the subject!
Natelie
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Natelie Fitzroy is a freelance writer and photographer with The Little White Studio.
