BG Staff
It’s been long since Facebook started copying SnapChat and after being unable to acquire it, the company aimed at replicating some of its prominent features on its own platform. Facebook has got the sight of a new crowd funding platform. GoFundMe is a popular site that allows individuals to raise funds for their personal requirements. At the moment, Facebook seems to be on a copying spree and has decided to go for GoFundMe’s feature this time.
Facebook recently announced that it will allow its more than one billion members to host personal fundraisers. It will help them to ask for money for themselves, their friends or even to those who aren’t on the digital network. The process would involve review from the potential fundraisers. This review will take up to 24 hours and will then allow the fundraisers to go live.
But this isn’t a service that Facebook is offering for free. Just like GoFundMe site, Facebook is also charging a fee. A 30% fee is charged for initiating a fundraising campaign whereas the platform charges 6.9% of the funds that are raised. According to Facebook, this money will be used to cover the payment processing, fraud protection, security as well as for inspecting the fundraising applications.
However, the social media giant has specified its users for raising funds only under six categories. Fundraising could only be done to meet expenses for education, natural disasters, medical costs, pet’s medical costs, personal emergencies, or funeral and loss. For now, these categories are limited though Facebook may expand these in future.
Facebook may face a backlash from some of the users who hate the idea of seeing fundraising requests in their news feed. Also, about 56% of the individuals believe that the crowd funding projects may include frivolous projects. The advantage that Facebook will have over GoFundMe site is that it already hosts the largest congregation of individuals in the world.
Zuckerberg’s dream seems to see Facebook emerge as a single platform to cover all its user’s requirements may be the real reason behind adding this feature to the platform.
