Back in May, Facebook introduced its Promoted Posts program, giving groups and companies with pages on the social media site the option of paying to get their posts seen by more of their fans.
The way Facebook works is that you don’t see every post by every friend or every page that you like—Facebook has a formula called Edgerank that tries to determine how interested you’d be in that post, based mainly on how much you’ve “liked,” shared or commented upon similar posts in the past, and how many people are liking, sharing and commenting on that particular post.
At least, that’s how it used to work. Now it’s got the additional factor of whether Facebook has received a bribe to show you a post that its formula tells it you won’t necessarily find to be that interesting.
Now, say your mail carrier lets it be known that they’ll accept a small fee to make sure that your mail doesn’t get lost—and you decline to pay the fee. What do you expect is going to happen? That’s right, more of your mail is going to get lost.
And sure enough, on September 20, Facebook decided to start losing more of your mail.
As reported by the marketing blog Social@Ogilvy (9/25/12), Facebook changed is algorithm for what they call “brand pages” in order to “to minimize brand page posts being seen by those who have opted in to ‘liking’ that page.” Ostensibly, the point of this was “to de-clutter the amount of posts served up to mobile and tablet users by brands.” But as Social@Ogilvy pointed out:
The change comes at a time when Facebook is trying to maximize the amount of paid advertising it has on the platform, in an effort to bump its share price after a struggling stock share post-IPO.
The blog of a company that tracks Facebook hits, Edgerank Checker (10/1/12), did a survey of 3,000 brand pages and found that the number of users they reached in the week after September 20 dropped by 36.5 percent—from 26 percent of their fans to 19.5 percent—compared to the week before September 20.
Looking at the stats for FAIR’s own Facebook page, the drop is obvious—and even more precipitous than Edgerank Checker’s average. In the week of September 14–20, we reached 14,927 people through Facebook; in the week from September 21–27, it was 4,992. That’s a drop of 67 percent.
The change in Edgerank illustrates the double-edged sword of social media. On the one hand, such outlets have the potential to vastly increase the ability of individuals to choose what information interests them, to influence what their friends and the general public are seeing, and to discuss and debate the media they receive in real time. On the other, when these activities are all taking place in a privatized communication network, all these choices can be manipulated to serve the profit needs (or political agenda) of the network’s corporate owner.
Today it’s messages from groups that are being blocked by Facebook in order to extract more money. But don’t think the company is going to stop there: “We are expanding a test that started last May that enables people to pay to promote a status update so that more friends may see it in their news feed,” Facebook announced in a statement (WebProNews, 9/19/12). “This particular test is simply to gauge people’s interest in this method of sharing with their friends.”
In other words—look for Facebook to soon be losing even more of your mail.
We experienced a 53% drop on our facebook page. Now I know why.
Following almost (?) to the letter the exact model that Net Neutrality sought to prevent: “it’s free and it always will be”.
When Net Neutrality advocates realize and decide that these gradual “feature” implementations were against neutrality, there will be a coherent outcry and perhaps legislation against this and similar practices.
I left Facebook when they started that “you will accept this update and we don’t care if you don’t like it, you have no choice”.
After that, it was easy to see that my processor was being slowly strangled to death with all the threads the apps on Facebook would shove down it. Every stupid ad wanted a gig of bandwidth it seemed like.
By the time I could begin to play one game, it was like trying to play while wrapped in rubber bands, and drenched in molasses in a cold room. It was a work out to post on FB.
They had not real plans, this is not sustainable, and they knew it. You can’t keep using MLM techniques (you just get 5 people to like this….) forever. Its like throwing stones in a pond. If you throw only one a day, not a problem; but if 6,000 people a day do it, big problem real quick; you run out of pond to make ripples in.
Flush Fecebook.
It is true….I already have been told that I have lost mail..people are not getting things they know that I post…I have faithful friends who like the things I post and now we are losing them and having parts of our timelines stolen from us…..Facebook is going to be NOBook if they don’t stop NOW. There are better sites that Do Not Censor and Steal Your Mail…
It looks like I made a good choice when I decided not to join Facebook. For one thing, I didn’t like their creepy photo recognition algorithm, but there were other reasons for my choice. And I’m far from alone.
What is to be done?
Eventually, open-source social networks will come to replace Zuckerberg’s juggernaut Facebook, just as Facebook absorbed most of Myspace’s userbase. There are a handful of start-ups working to develop Facebook’s replacement right now. We just have to wait a little longer..
Way to commit suicide, FB. Turn your users off like this and they’ll be gone for good.
We “liked” these pages and EXPECT them to show up. If you block them YOU are violating OUR demand for those posts. Then what use is social networking if we aren’t networking with who we WANT to network with.
Idiots at FB do not understand their public! Give us what you PROMISE, our LIKES!
It wouldn’t hurt if everyone who read this article posted it to their FB page. That’s gotta piss Zuckerberg off.
Thank God I never joined Facebook! This article just gave me some new arguments why one shall avoid it. Göteborgsposten, a newspaper in Gothenburg, Sweden, recently wrote a series of articles concerning Facebook. FB is regularly scanning ALL traffic on the site, saying they are hunting terrorists and pedophiles. Just that is a clear violation of Swedish law, because it is a thing for the police to do, and ONLY IF You are under an inquiry for a crime which can give You at least one year in prison – and, of course, they are allowed ONLY to check up just YOUR FB activities!
I don´t know what the US legislation looks like on that matter, but I doubt it is legal. Can there be one or another loophole in the notorious Patriot Act?… Or is it CIA or/and FBI acting in the shadows?…
EVERYTHING You place on FB – texts, photos, films – are FB:s property from the very moment You put it there, and they can use it as they like without asking.
You, who are FB-users – far too many, from My point of view – have probably received ads about what You might be interested in. The real reason why FB is scanning ALL activities on their site is to get an opportunity to let their advertisers send ads to FB-users, made out of their profiles. If You like fancy cars, You might receive ads about BMW, Porsche, etc – if You´ve recently been a mother/father, You´ll have ads about baby supplies. If You like to travel, You´ll get ads from travel agencies. There have even been sent suggestions about dating sites to newly been widows!! Yes, it´s true!!
On the other hand, there is one good thing about FB for the moment: Their stock value has fallen from $38 down to about $20 since the introduction on the stock market. Or is it even lower? I´m not checking the stock market on a regular basis, because I have no shares!!! Hahaha!!