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"Only 12% of your friends see your average status update, but Facebook is testing an option called 'Highlight' that lets you pay a few dollars to have one of your posts appear to more friends. Highlight lets the average user, not Pages or businesses, select an “important post” and “make sure friends see this”, but not color it yellow as Stuff wrote when it first spotted the feature."

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/10/highlight-facebook-status-updates/

Basically, to get heard on Facebook, you need to pay.

Tumblr does this already. I guess Facebook wants to supplant itself into every aspect of every internet user's life.

Wait, what do I mean 'I guess'?

The problem with this is this is completely unfair to the point that it is on the border of unconstitutional for a American companies to do this.

Do you know what led Egypt to "freedom"? Facebook and the ability to post freely without limitations. Facebook even took pride in this accomplishment when it happened; what logical reasoning is behind taking pride in people using your service to change the world and now limiting speech a year after?

sigh

It sounds like you're jumping to conclusions.

For one, it's an optional service. 12% of your friends seeing your posts was the way it's always been. This allows for a person to pay to make your friends see it. It's not limiting your speech, because 1. you signed up for the site under the terms of service. There are other social networking sites one can use, or you can create your own. That's the way it goes in reality. And 2. it only increases your ability to be seen if…

Two, you must be in the test group and you must be willing to pay. If you're not in the test group, you don't have that ability in the first place.
 
Facebook isn't going anywhere. Google+ didn't become what people thought it might, and Facebook is far different from Twitter. MySpace isn't popular anymore. Facebook has a niche and no one else can fill it just yet (perhaps Pinterest, but I don't know what that's about.)

Since they're comfortable but they're apparently losing some money or stock value, they're looking into ways to keep "improving" to be ahead of the curve.

It's a private company. They can do what they want, more or less, and users signed up for it. The issue for me is that people can force me to see their posts, not freedom of speech. But that's what "unfriending" is for.
 
 
I think there was another thread on this, but related search terms don't bring them up so easily.

Okay, yeah. I was going overboard with the "unconstitutionality" argument. However, in reality, you are limited to the three most popular social networks as of now: Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ (popularity also in that order). The service may be optional but you don't have many options to choose where all your friends and family are on one site. Twitter is certainly not for that and Google+, in my opinion, is mostly used by it's user base to publicly talk to people they don't even know personally. The most problematic thing about this is that if you have to announce something extremely important to people you know personally; you may be forced to pay to do just that. THAT is a limitation of speech. Also, might I add that many Americans do not have tons of bags with money in them to use.

As of now, it is limited to a test group. However, that's the first step to making it public for everyone's use.

Honestly, their crash of stock may be just why this is being implemented. They are loosing so much money that they are forced to use such a desperate measure on it's users.

Also, I have to add this:

There are other social networking sites one can use, or you can create your own.</blockquote

Not to be mean, but I honestly don't know where you were going with that. I doubt the average person can create a social network.

Facebook: $ocial networking

I think Facebook is beginning to slide into a state of decline. All tech companies do eventually. Apple went into a decline when Steve Jobs left/was fired, and it had a renaissance when he came back; time will tell if it will end the same way in the wake of his death, but I digress. Facebook, with the bungled IPO a few weeks ago, is beginning to do the same (decline, that is).

Anyone remember The Social Network? How Zuckerberg and Parker were obsessed with being cool? Well, that was in 2003, when the site was a college exclusive. Now, it's 2012, and anyone with thirteen years and an email address can join. Before, it was like a club, being driven by exclusivity; just being there made you feel like a VIP. Now that there's no velvet rope, now that they let everyone and their pet cat on the site, the coolness that went along with the exclusivity is gone, and the site went from Studio 64 on a Saturday night in 1978 to a McDonalds on a weekday afternoon: Full of really stupid people.

What's my point here? That "everyone and their pet cat" I mentioned includes teachers, employers, and especially parents. Teens and college kids (myself included) are sick of having to censor their thoughts, thinking there might be real life repercussions. That's why young people are moving away from the site, to places like Tumblr, Twitter and Pinterest, where they don't have to moderate their thoughts, where they can express themselves more freely. I recently joined Twitter myself, and I must say it is a refreshing experience. This might be why Facebook is putting more emphasis on having people record life events (the Timeline). The Zuck himself tested it out when he posted about his marriage last month. Hopefully that's how they'll be able to pull themselves back up.

This might be why Facebook is putting more emphasis on having people record life events (the Timeline). The Zuck himself tested it out when he posted about his marriage last month. Hopefully that’s how they’ll be able to pull themselves back up.

The Timeline started rolling out for everyone on January 24th and finished rolling out by 2 weeks after that. Mark Zuckerburg only posted about his marriage last month. After posting his marriage, the Facebook stock crash happened (these two events are irrelevant and have nothing to do with each other if that is what you think that sentence implies). The Timeline hasn't helped them one bit; if not made Facebook worse.

Here's the flaws that I found about the idea of the "Timeline." Users DO NOT want to take extra steps and add a special section of their Timeline when they can just say "I got my drivers license today!" Not to mention on average, Facebook posts are like these and have no category in the Timeline preset of events:

Facebook is the Titanic, and most people on it are refusing to get off.

Solution: Switch to Google+

I noticed that new feature. Basically you can pay some money to have your pointless Facebook drivel advertised to extra people who still don't give a shit about it. Knowing how narcissistic people are and the desire to be heard, it may actually bring in some revenue so I would not say it could be killing Facebook. It's not like anything has changed

If you had to pay money to have your messages be heard at all, then it would kill Facebook. But that said I have long since been sick of FB already and I already switched to Google plus. The only problem is, I'm the only one there! So I'm still using Facebook

-Nobody want's to leave Facebook because nobody want to leave Facebook.
-Nobody goes to Google+ because nobody goes to Google+

It's a terrible deadlock.

@BSod
Also the fact that some people have invested money and their time Facebook, they feel obligated to stay. Some people may also not switch because they somehow deduced the notion that other social sites are simply coping Facebook and will not switch because they do not support a site which is unoriginal.

Who the hell invests money into FB?

People buying Farmville cash.

I would not invest even a cent into Facebook. Google, on the other-hand, I already buy music (yes, I BUY music; why? Because it started to become a pain to find free downloadable music with great quality [128 kbps is horrible quality]), apps, and so forth.

And Facebook continues to get stupider.
sigh

It's not even the P2W kind of deal either….
Just spend actual money to get more useless items that won't make things anymore entertaining…

Geez, the changes to news feed were worse enough. I don't care if its the most popular status update, I just want to see what's up with my friends now.

Facebook is just dooming themselves. This is just proof of it. If you're trying to find other ways to make money, it shows that your current business model is failing. And it doesn't help if you try remedying that issue by ruining the interface of your social network.

I'm not all too fond of Facebook myself, but I do use it often, and I don't see a viable alternative yet in terms of popularity, userbase, and/or functionality. I really don't see why people hate Facebook so much.

I think the sentiments in this thread speak more to the trends and values within Web culture more than Facebook actually failing. People don't like sports in Web culture. People don't like religion in Web culture. People don't like Facebook in Web culture. It's hard to say whether or not Facebook can continue like this, only because Facebook is unprecedented, as are many things involving the Internet. Things need time to pan out, and unless you've been around since the Internet explosion (and I, at 24, haven't been online for long enough to grasp that,) I find most of these claims of Facebook failing to be biased and unfounded.
 
This seems to be something that most large companies do. They test and try out new things. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don't. Seeing as this is optional, just like many of the apps on Facebook, I logically cannot find much fault with it.
 
If users want to use the function (and some will,) then Facebook will make money from it. If users don't want to use it, then Facebook won't make money, but I doubt they'll lose money. I'll bet that most people saying that Facebook is actually killing itself don't use Facebook all that often. The people that I interact with on Facebook all over the world just don't care.

It's got the userbase, it's got tons of advertisement income, it's got tons of celebrities, athletes, musicians, and businesses using it, it's the premiere social networking site, it's got the functionality (albeit controversial upon implementation, people often adjust to the changes instead of leaving the site), and it's well-established in comparison to other websites.

Again, it's hard to say how anything on the Internet will hold up for 10 or 20 years, but I don't see how it can fail. And most certainly not from an optional app that would make them more money.

They talk a lot about Farmville in this article.