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"Facebook is testing a new product in the US that would allow ordinary users to promote their own status updates, such as birthdays or anniversaries, in their friends&amp;#039; news feeds.  The move, which would mark a major shift in the social network&amp;#039;s strategy of not charging its users, involves a &amp;#039;Promote&amp;#039; button being added to the options around status updates.   Businesses are already able to promote their pages on Facebook via a separate product that launched in May. But now the feature is being offered to ordinary users. Facebook started testing the system in New Zealand in May, and then expanded it to more than 20 other countries. Yesterday, US users with fewer than 5,000 friends and subscribers were first able to try the promoted posts feature.  American Facebook users can now opt to pay around $7 (\u00A34) to push their update up the rankings in the news feeds of their friends. They also get a tool which shows how many people have viewed the paid update.  &amp;quot;Every day, news feed delivers your posts to your friends. Sometimes a particular friend might not notice your post, especially if a lot of their friends have been posting recently and your story isn&amp;#039;t near the top of their feed,&amp;quot; said Facebook in a blog post.  &amp;quot;When you promote a post - whether it&amp;#039;s wedding photos, a garage sale, or big news - you bump it higher in news feed so your friends and subscribers are more likely to notice it.&amp;quot; Microblogging website Twitter already offers promoted tweets for its users.   Should Facebook officially launch promoted posts, the move could open up a new revenue source for the firm, which has suffered a major slump in its share price since listing in the US in May.  After becoming the only US public company ever to debut with a valuation of more than \u00A3100 billion, Facebook has seen investor confidence in the social network&amp;#039;s long-term prospects evaporate.  Mark Zuckerberg&amp;#039;s company is now actively seeking alternative money-making solutions beyond online advertising, and just last week launched a gift-giving service as part of its first big move into e-commerce.  But the promoted posts feature is likely to prove controversial with users, as it requires them for the first time to pay for services that have been free.  Facebook&amp;#039;s existing algorithm places status updates from friends at the top of news feeds based on the number of &amp;quot;Likes&amp;quot; and comments they have generated. But the promoted posts system would instead prioritise paid updates.  Speaking to the Financial Times, Altimeter Group analyst Rebecca Lieb said that this represents &amp;quot;consumers becoming advertisers&amp;quot; on the social network.  She added: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s also an interesting way for Facebook to get more data out of their users, because anybody who pays to promote a post will supply their credit card information.&amp;quot; How do you feel about Facebook&amp;#039;s promoted posts? Would you pay to prioritise your status updates? Let us know below: "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tech/news/a410223/facebook-testing-promoted-user-posts-in-the-us/>