A new Facebook feature dubbed Publishing Garage will see the social media giant work with businesses to improve how they use the social media platform to market themselves.
The new program is yet to be officially unveiled by Facebook.
It was discovered by US-based blog Fusible, which noticed Facebook has registered a number of domain names including PublishingGarage.com and FacebookPublishingGarage.com.
An online search for “Facebook Publishing Garage” brings up the website of Addie Marino, a creative strategist in the global marketing solutions group at Facebook.
On her website, Marino reveals Publishing Garage will be an “intensive three-day publishing workshop”.
According to Marino, the program is “geared at building world-class social publishing systems that enable brands to create the most meaningful connections with their connections and their friends through News Feed stories”.
“As far as we can tell, Facebook has never communicated about the program in the past, nor are there any Facebook Pages to be found (yet),” Marino says.
“We’ll monitor the domain names to see when the Facebook Publishing Garage website goes live.”
According to a report by TechCrunch, the Publishing Garage program has been quietly running since September, although the names of participating brands have not been made public.
Publishing Garage isn’t the only new initiative designed to monetise the business.
Facebook has also started testing a system for users to send messages to people outside of their immediate circle of friends for a payment of $US1.
“This test will give a small number of people the option to pay to have a message routed to the Inbox rather than the Other folder of a recipient that they are not connected with,” it said.
“Imposing a financial cost on the sender may be the most effective way to discourage unwanted messages and facilitate delivery of messages that are relevant and useful.”
According to Facebook, each user will only see one message each week rerouted from their Other folder to their Inbox as a result of the $1, to minimise abuse.
The paid messaging facility is currently only available in the United States and to individuals, not advertisers.
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