Many businesses are finding their organic social reach hitting the basement. That’s likely thanks to Facebook’s new content algorithm that takes it upon itself to decide what we want to see in our feeds.
In the good old days, “liking” a Page used to mean that you’d see that business’ posts in your news feed. That is not necessarily the case anymore, and it has lots of heavyweight FB users crying foul.
So Facebook recognizes the error of its ways and is apologetically making it all good again, right?
Uh, no. As David Griner points out in Adweek, a highly-placed Facebook exec got publicly snarky about the situation.
“Food site Eat24 cooked up a lot of buzz with its ‘breakup letter’ to Facebook, in which it said it was closing down its page … saying Facebook is becoming a pay-to-play service instead of a true social network,” writes Griner.
“Such criticisms are nothing new. What is new is that a Facebook executive responded with a big middle finger.” Ouch.
The response came, via Facebook, from FB’s director of global communications/monetization Brandon McCormick, who basically told Eat24 — whose Page, btw, had 70,000 likes before they shut it down on April 1 –that nobody cares about their content.
Eat24’s fans begged to differ, and as one commented rather succinctly, “If we like a page, we should receive the content. Fair and Square.”
So why the disconnect? From our perspective, it’s spelled out pretty clearly in McCormick’s title: Director of Global Communications/Monetization. The main priority for Facebook, clearly, is to monetize communications. Pay to play, for real.
They have a right to do so. It’s a free service for users, and Facebook has a responsibility to its investors to make ends meet. And users, like Eat24 or other companies, have a right to leave and take their social communications elsewhere, which they have done (and they are nailing it).
It’s Facebook’s loss when these popular content providers pull out. We just don’t know if Facebook will realize that in time to save itself.
Oh, and if you haven’t seen Eat24’s breakup letter to Facebook, it’s worth a read.
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