Earlier this month, Facebook began the Beta roll out of a new currency system called Facebook Credits. The feature allows users to purchase credits to reward their friends for posting good status updates at the rate of $1 USD for 100 credits. Currently, the system is in Beta mode, and is only available at select colleges only.

Sounds innocent enough: your friend posts a cool status update - you reward them with credit.

However what this means to brands is, if Facebook Credits take off, brands will soon be able to offer their “influential friends” a reward for mentioning their product to a highly attractive demographic (the fastest growing demographic on Facebook being 35).

For record labels and artists promoting their new release or upcoming tours, a “pay per play” strategy can be applied too -but for a price far lower than a traditional ad-buy.

Even though there are no hard statistics on exactly how much influence a status update has on the consumer buying power, we all know from personal usage, how effective music mentions and recommendations can be when we see our own friends make a mention of a band or song on their own updates

Now all brands need is to find the right friends who would be enough of a Fan to actually do it.