Facebook strives to stay profitable with new pay-to-promote feature

Facebook users have been able to promote their own posts for $7 each since last year. But now, Facebook is gradually rolling out a new feature which will enable users to promote their friends' posts for, you guessed it, seven dollars each.

The feature will be available to all users once the gradual roll out is complete

The company told Bloomberg, "If your friend is renting their apartment out and she tells her friends on Facebook, you can share the post with the people you and your friend have in common so that it shows up higher in news feed and more people notice it."

Most people have hundreds and sometimes thousands of Facebook friends, making the News Feed so fast-paced that many friends' posts are buried in the sands of time before anyone has the chance to look at it. The algorithm responsible for what you see on your News Feed "ensures that only about 15 percent of an account holder's posts are seen by their friends or fans," according to Jim Edwards of Business Insider.

If you're just sharing your family vacation photo album or a status update about how delicious your macaroni and cheese is, you're probably not going to mind that only "15 percent" of your friends and fans will see the post.

But if your friend needs help promoting a public event, a charity or cause, an advertisement for selling something, or an important life announcement, Facebook's new pay-to-promote feature might come in handy.

Unfortunately, the cost of promoting a post won't be a static seven dollars. Instead, the cost to promote a post will vary depending on a number of factors, "including geographic location and how many people the post would reach," Salvador Rodriguez of the L.A. Times reports.

The feature will be rolled out to all users over time.