Facebook has expanded its promoted posts for status updates to European users after earlier trials in the US and elsewhere.

Promoted posts let users emphasise a particular post in their friends’ news feeds by staying in a higher position for a longer period of time.

In the US, Facebook has been charging users $7 for this service since it began trialling there in early October, although no European pricing has been confirmed.

A Facebook blog post detailing the US launch of the service read: “Sometimes a particular friend might not notice your post, especially if a lot of their friends have been posting recently and your story isn’t near the top of their feed [see below].

Source: Facebook

“When you promote a post – whether it’s wedding photos, a garage sale, or big news – you bump it higher in news feed so your friends and subscribers are more likely to notice it [see below].

Source: Facebook

This roll out is open to regular account holders with less than 5,000 friends and subscribers – businesses have already been able to promote posts on their pages as part of a separate scheme since May.

This extended roll-out announcement comes the same week as Facebook formally unveiled its first major engineering centre outside of the US in London’s Covent Garden (nma.co.uk 16 Oct 2012).