Facebook has announced plans to start charging fees to users of the social network.
In December 2009, Facebook users were hit with yet another hoax when messages began circulating advising them that on 30 June 2010 the popular social networking site would be instituting a monthly charge of $4.99 and entreating them to visit a particular Facebook group supposedly set up to protest the impending charge: From Saturday morning facebook will become chargeable. If you have at least 10 contacts send them this message. In this way we will see that you are an avid user and your logo will become blue (?) and will remain free. (As discussed in the paper today. Facebook will cost 0.01ps per message. Send this message to 10 people. When you do the light will turn blue otherwise facebook will activate billing. Now it's official! It has been published in the media. Facebook has just released the entry price: £5.99 ($9.10) to keep the subscription of your status to be set to 'private'. If you paste this message on your page, it will be offered free (I said paste not share) if not tomorrow, all your posts can become public. Even the messages that have been deleted or the photos not allowed. After all, it does not cost anything for a simple copy and paste. FACEBOOK JUST RELEASED THEIR PRICE GRID FOR MEMBERSHIP. $9.99 PER MONTH FOR GOLD MEMBER SERVICES, $6.99 PER MONTH FOR SILVER MEMBER SERVICES, $3.99 PER MONTH FOR BRONZE MEMBER SERVICES, FREE IF YOU COPY AND PASTE THIS MESSAGE BEFORE MIDNIGHT TONIGHT. WHEN YOU SIGN ON TOMORROW MORNING YOU WILL BE PROMPTED FOR PAYMENT INFO... IT IS OFFICIAL IT WAS EVEN ON THE NEWS. FACEBOOK WILL START CHARGING DUE TO THE NEW PROFILE CHANGES. IF YOU COPY THIS ON YOUR WALL YOUR ICON WILL TURN BLUE AND FACEBOOK WILL BE FREE FOR YOU. PLEASE PASS THIS MESSAGE ON IF NOT YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE DELETED IF YOU DO NOT PAY! FACEBOOK JUST RELEASED THEIR PRICE GRID FOR MEMBERSHIP. $9.99 PER MONTH FOR GOLD MEMBER SERVICES, $6.99 PER MONTH FOR SILVER MEMBER SERVICES, $3.99 PER MONTH FOR BRONZE MEMBER SERVICES, FREE IF YOU COPY AND PASTE THIS MESSAGE BEFORE MIDNIGHT TONIGHT. WHEN YOU SIGN ON TOMORROW MORNING YOU WILL BE PROMPTED FOR PAYMENT INFO... IT IS OFFICIAL IT WAS EVEN ON THE NEWS. FACEBOOK WILL START CHARGING DUE TO THE NEW PROFILE CHANGES. IF YOU COPY THIS ON YOUR WALL YOUR ICON WILL TURN BLUE AND FACEBOOK WILL BE FREE FOR YOU. PLEASE PASS THIS MESSAGE ON IF NOT YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE DELETED IF YOU DO NOT PAY! It is official it was even on the news. Facebook will start charging due to the new profile changes. If you copy this on your wall your icon will turn blue and facebook will be free for you. please pass this message on if not your account will be deleted if you don't pay From Saturday morning facebook will become chargeable. If you have at least 10 contacts send them this message. In this way we will see that you are an avid user and your logo will become blue (?) and will remain free. (As discussed in the paper today. Facebook will cost 0.01ps per message. Send this message to 10 people. When you do the light will turn blue otherwise facebook will activate billing. Some of these messages were just hoaxes; others pointed users to protest page that was a trap for the unwary: clicking on certain elements of it initiated a script that hijacked users' computers. Some of those who did venture a click had their computers taken over by a series of highly objectionable images while malware simultaneously attempted to install itself onto their computers. The claim that Facebook would be initiating user charges was but the bait to lure people to the protest page and its hidden malicious payload; there are no plans afoot to require payment from those who use the site. Regarding the issue of whether Facebook would ever charge users for its social networking services, that company's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, said in an April 2009 Business Week interview that: 'The answer is no, we are not planning on charging a basic fee for our basic services. Once again, that question stems from people thinking we're growing so quickly, we're running out of money. We're growing really quickly, but we can finance that growth. We're not going to charge for our basic services.' In their Help Center section, the social network says in answer to the query 'Will Facebook ever charge for service?' quite plainly 'No. We will always keep Facebook a free service for everyone.' In early July 2011, the spread of yet another 'Facebook is about to start charging its users' canard (driven by a fictional Weekly World News article) was fueled by the promise contained in that version of the hoax that users who posted the rumor as their status would be spared the levy. Those who attempted to exempt themselves from the charge thereby spread the lie even further, thus doing the leg work of the hoaxsters. (The logical disconnect of the practical joke seemed to evade many: If Facebook were bent upon extracting fees from its users, why would it choose to exempt any of them?) In late September 2011, the 'post as your status to get out of being charged and make the icon turn blue' hoax ran rampant yet again, this time accompanied by claims that Facebook would be implementing a tiered membership system. The same hoax reappeared in May 2012 and again in July 2013. In September 2014 the fake news site National Report piled on to this tired hoax meme by publishing a fictitious article positing that Facebook would begin charging users $2.99 per month starting 1 November 2014: At a press conference this morning, Facebook rolled out their new monthly service plan which begins November 1st of this year. The social media giant says they will start charging members $2.99/mo to use the services that the site has to offer. 'After thinking long and hard about this decision, at the end of the day, we were forced to add this monthly fee,' Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg told reporters. 'If we don't do something about our rising costs now, Facebook could cease to exist in the near future.' As of September 2017 the hoax remained in broad circulation via Facebook. A version attributed to 'Mark, the Director of Facebook' suggested that it 'seems that all the warnings are real' and 'Facebook use will cost money': I'm Mark, the Director of Facebook. Hello everyone, it seems that all the warnings are real. Facebook use will cost money. If you send this string to 18 different from your list, your icon will be blue and it will be free for you. If you do not believe me, tomorrow at 6 pm Facebook will be closed and to open it you will have to pay. This is all by law. This message is to inform all our users that our servers have recently been very congested. We are asking for your help to solve this problem. We require that our active users forward this message to each of the people in your contact list in order to confirm our active facebook users. If you do not send this message to all your facebook contacts, then your account will remain inactive with the consequence of losing all your contacts without the transmission of this message. Your SmartPhone will be updated within the next 24 hours, will have a new design and a new color for the chat. Dear Facebook users, we are going to do an update for Facebook from 23:00 p.m. until 05:00 a.m. on this day. If you do not send this to all your contacts, the update will be cancelled. You will not have the possibility to chat with your facebook messages. You will have to pay the rate unless you are a frequent user. If you have at least 10 contacts, send this SMS and the logo will turn red to indicate that you are a user Confirmed ... We finish it for free. Tomorrow they start to collect the messages for facebook at 0.37 cents. Forward this message to more than your 9 contacts and it will be free for life for you. Watch and the ball will turn green. Do it and you will see Facebook is now free. Send to 10 people to reactivate your service again without cost. However, as of September 2017, a Facebook help page answered the question 'Does it cost money to use Facebook? Is it true that Facebook is going to charge to use the site?' in this way: No. Facebook is a free site and will never require that you pay to continue using the site. In April 2018 Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during congressional testimony that 'there will always be a version of Facebook that is free,' a comment which suggested that the social media company has at least considered a paid (possibly ad-free) version of their platform, but no such version has been announced or demonstrated.Recent Updates Updated to reflect recent news reports. 
nan
11154-proof-02-facebook_money_feature.jpg