Facebook has been working on and is in the early stages of an internal payment system.

For a while now they have tried to work out a business plan that would generate revenue from its over 100,000,000 users. Lately word is stirring that they have hinted more at the possibility of charging users for their service. Exactly how remains to be seen but some thoughts have been possibly charging for the use of vanity urls (currently free so get one while they are) or even for allowing you to purchase credits that can be used to buy virtual goods from the third-party applications that run on the site, or from Facebook itself.

There has yet to be a full disclosure of the concept but it brings me to the new poll I’m running on the site (look to the right side of the screen and scroll down a bit in the navigation areas): “If Facebook began to charge for their service, would you still use it?”

Voice your opinion and let me know your thoughts.

****** UPDATE 1/15/10 ******

People, please take note of the original date of this post. The original date was June of 2009 (thus the reason you see no “poll in the right side of the page”—it’s long gone and was only there during June of 2009.) The report was based off of data gathered during that time period and merely passed on by me here. Not sure what has caused everyone to suddenly search for this online, but be aware that this original post is over a half a year old (funny how people’s search habits are.)

Here is a link to what apparently sparked the craze on the internet back then (early 2009) …
//www.snopes.com/computer/internet/fbcharge.asp

Here’s what Facebook had to say about this way back during that time (Second QTR 2009):

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.”

Sources:
Business Week. “Sheryl Sandberg on Facebook’s Future.” , 7 April 2009.

Point taken, case closed.