Facebook to charge businesses for Offers service

Facebook must be looking at a new potential revenue stream after announcing that they will begin to charge businesses that want to run Offers on Facebook, which means what was previously free could end up as another revenue generator. Some might see this as a knee-jerk reaction to Wall Street’s clamoring for new sources of growth as well as profit from the social networking giant. Just to recap, Facebook Offers was launched earlier this year, where it enabled retailers and other local merchants to send deals to their Facebook fans. Users will then claim these offers from their News Feeds, followed by redeeming the vouchers at the designated stores in order to take advantage of the given discounts.

Soon, the merchants will find out that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and they will have to fork out a minimum of $5 on related ads in order to promote each Facebook Offer to a targeted audience. The company’s Facebook page size will be another determining factor in the final cost total. No idea on how merchants will react to this news though.