Comments:"Lukas Klein - Send a Facebook message to anyone's inbox, for free"
URL:http://lukasklein.com/blog/free-facebook-message-inbox/
Thanks everyone! This post is currently #1 on Hacker News!
The catch with Facebook's messaging system is that when you send a message to a contact that's not in your friend-list, it will go to their 'Other' folder instead of their inbox. That's a good thing, because it prevents you from getting spammed. The not-so-good-thing is that Facebook is testing if people would pay for their messages to get prioritized.
Some days ago I noticed that there's a little hack that allows you to bypass the automatic message filtering and directly send a message to another's inbox, even if they set their filtering to 'strict'. It works by using the 'Report' feature.
The first step is to go to their profile and click on 'Report/Block...'.
In the now shown modal, choose 'Submit a Report' -> 'Report XYZ's account'
When you then choose 'This timeline is using a fake name', a message box will appear with a prepopulated text that asks the person to change their name, but you can change it to whatever you want. And that's it. This message will go directly to the other user's inbox, no matter what filter-preferences are in place.
I have tested this with some test-accounts, and it worked every time. Since Facebook hasn't responded yet to my report I've decided to make it public.