The first point I would make is that while it might initially seem like the interesting experimental question is 'How much would someone be willing to pay to send a message?' I think the real question is 'What kind of a message would someone be willing to pay to send?'
This, I think is either the flaw or the brilliance of the Facebook plan ... depending on what they hope to do. I think the most likely outcome is that this will be a way of monetizing trolling and stalking. I'm not going to pay $100 to drop Mark Z a note saying "what up bro? Awesome timeline!"
Actually, theres pretty much nothing I have to say to him worth $100 to me. More likely, his notes will be hateful racist/sexist/homophobic/meanspirited trolling of the type the facebook "Friend" system purported to rid us of by putting you in control of who your network consisted of. Or, the notes will be from stalkers ranging from well-intentioned crush to deranged serial killer level. I mean, really ... what other kind of note are you paying to send? I may be missing something, but to me this feels like nothing more than a virtual dunking booth.
Mark Zuckerberg can likely pay an assistant to go through his inbox and delete the junk, but for the rest of us this could potentially be a really negative thing. I'm envisioning a flood of Nigerian Prince scams, long lost *relatives* connecting to scam us out of money, stalking ex-boyfriends/girlfriends who can't take the un-friending message, or perhaps worst of all - cyber bullies. There has been an unbelievable proliferation of adolescent suicides from cyber-bullying in recent years and this new policy scares me a bit as a tool that will essentially allow the 'mean kids' to pay $1 to throw a virtual rock at the 'outsider kids'. I hope Facebook has thought this through and will at the very least restrict this option to adults-only. Cyber-bullying issues are on the rise for adults as well however, as new generations of adults have grown up in a connected social media world and are increasingly invested, personally, in their online relationships.
Some are claiming this is a policy to combat spam by making such messages more costly. However, one of the interesting things about prices is that unexpected things can happen when they switch from $Zero to $Something or vice versa. One of the great puzzles and parables of behavioral economics comes from a day care which was having issues with parents coming late to pick up their kids. In order to discourage this, the day care instituted a $5 charge for late pickups. And what happened was a massive INCREASE in the number of late pickups. Huh?
Here's why: Before the charge was imposed, the cost of being late was that the parents *felt bad* about being late. As soon as that stigma was removed and replaced by a $5 fee, then all of the sudden they didn't have to feel bad anymore. The daycare told them being late was $5 worth of inconvenience, and many parents then happily paid it so they could finish up a little more work or sneak out for a quick happy hour, etc. So the danger of putting a price on something that previously didn't have one is that by telling people there IS a price, it changes how we feel about the thing, sometimes in unexpected ways. (ie: the movie "Indecent Proposal" or any number of similar tales). It wasn't just that the price was too low for the daycare and that they simply needed to raise it - although that is one solution to the problem. When we're asked to put a price on the priceless, it is no longer priceless to us which means the act of pricing it has changed it fundamentally in some sort of Schrödinger's cat or Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle kind of way. Deep stuff, I know. But, what I'm getting at is, if you tell people that the cost to send someone a nasty troll message is $1, then that might lead to a massive INCREASE in cyber-bullying, not a reduction, as you're implicitly condoning the behavior and reducing the non-monetary reputation/moral conscience/social costs by selling the opportunity to do it for the low-low price of only $1! Something to think about.
On the more positive side, however, I could see this sort of 'micro-transaction' model as a tool for startup businesses, artists, and particularly musicians to get some monetary benefits from the networks of followers they've developed. I could see if a good independent band were in particular need of $$$ to record a new album or fix up their van to get down the road to their next show they might use this as a kind of 'Kickstarter' sort of model ... you could post a message on Facebook saying "Hey everyone, message us to vote on tonight's set!" or "Send us a message and receive access to an exclusive live-track we've been rehearsing for our upcoming tour!" Potentially, if you were a small band that had a few thousand facebook fans and everyone sent a $1 message that could be enough to 'kickstart' any number of things from replacing broken gear to getting studio time to fixing a blown transmission, etc and could have a major impact. The trick would be figuring out a way to have this type of "premium" messaging that didn't kill off the organic connections and turn off people ... basically it can't feel like "selling out." That will probably be easier said than done (recent attempts by some bands I like to take advantage of Kickstarter tour financing has met with some major backlash), but is worth watching. Apple figured out a way to get people to pay $1 for an mp3, so it can be done ... people I think are very willing to pay for things they truly value as long as they don't feel like they're being gouged and they feel like they're getting something above and beyond what they could have previously gotten for free. It's just a matter of sorting that out somehow.
What are your thoughts on $1 messages (or $100 messages!) on Facebook? Who would you message and what would you say?
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