Bangalore: Seeking more ways to generate revenue, Facebook has now introduced a new way of promoting your posts via “promoted posts” option. The users can boost the visibility of their postings by paying a nominal fee.    

The latest feature,  then named as ‘highlight’, was first tested in New Zealand in May this year, and FB said that such tests had been carried out across 20 other countries across globe since then. On Wednesday Facebook opened up this feature as a test for limited number of its US users, and ensures that the paid post gets prominent place in their friends and subscribers news feeds.

“When you promote a post—whether it’s wedding photos, a garage sale, or big news- you bump it higher in new feeds so your friends and subscribers are more likely to notice it,” a Wednesday’s statement in FB official blog.

 Facebook's newsfeed display the user content by its freshness and number of likes. The paid postings enjoy top visibility for larger section of viewers, and you can know how many views you got, like 3x, or 4.2x. Nevertheless paid posts enjoy limelight for limited period of time.

It is considered to be a smart move by FB to look beyond advertisements for its revenue which accounted for 84 percent, and especially when FB shares value is 1.7 percent down as on Wednesday.

The other revenue options FB playing with is 30 percent cut on purchase of virtual goods by users on Zynga and other social game websites and also by the feature (only in US) for users to buy and send real gifts. So company is clearly signaling to play a bigger role in e-commerce.  

However the FB’s main social networking service will remain free as said by its spokesman Jonathan Thaw.

The feature is especially useful to highlight something prominent, or market a product, but there could be few glitches too. Money man gets highest number of postings, and top visibility than the rest of users in a group. The paid postings may get too crowded hence miss on to its purpose.