Oh Myyy! (18 page)
Before I jump in, let me preface this by explaining that I have been both a champion and critic of Facebook, but always with the hope of creating a better experience for everyone. Admittedly, it took me some time to come up to speed on how Facebook works, and to pinpoint where it works best, and where it sometime falls short. Lately, my status updates or even my comments on other pages about Facebook’s ranking algorithm have gotten picked up by the press, especially after Facebook’s less-than-optimal initial public offering. Everyone is wondering whether Facebook is on the right track, and as an avid user with one of the most engaged fan bases, I’ve become something of a magnet for controversy.
Some basic concepts first. Contrary to what many users believe, when you post something on Facebook, it doesn’t show up in all of your friends’ newsfeeds. Just imagine if it did; basic math dictates this would soon overload the system. So instead, Facebook assigns an “EdgeRank” to each post to determine whether it will appear in someone else’s feed. If people frequently comment, share or click “like” on your posts, it’s more likely that your future posts will appear in their newsfeeds.
This gives a distinct advantage to those who got in the game early and drew attention, because their posts will tend to edge out other posts. Consider this: If there’s limited real estate (i.e., what can physically appear in your newsfeed), and Facebook gives greater priority to the posts of those you’ve interacted with before, then the chance that you’ll see a new friend’s or page’s post is comparatively lower. Conversely, think of all those annoying people you don’t really know that well yet are constantly liking or commenting on your status updates; your posts wind up on their newsfeeds more frequently than on the streams of your good friends, who are likely largely ignoring your posts because, well, they’re your good friends already and don’t need to read your statuses.
This aspect of EdgeRank can be distressing for community, celebrity and company pages that want to promote on Facebook. They discover, for example, that their attempts to reach their fans — even those that have clicked “like” on their pages — often fall short because there simply isn’t much existing engagement with them. This means that their posts, however well-crafted, often never even reach much of their intended audience. One article I read suggested that the average post by a page only reaches about 16% of its fans due to EdgeRank and the fact that, shockingly, people are not on Facebook 24/7. This presents a bit of a conundrum, because in order to gain engagement, pages need to reach their fans, but they can’t reach their fans without first gaining more engagement.
In mid-2012, Facebook put forth a solution: Promoted Posts. Under this program, pages can pay to ensure that their posts reach more of their fans. It has been popular of late to lay into Facebook over Promoted Posts, which some say reduces the visibility of non-profit, community or small business sites in favor of larger corporations willing to spend serious money. Page administrators cry foul for a few reasons.
First, many point out that Facebook encourages pages to use advertising to grow the number of fans, but never did a great job explaining that most of those people would not wind up seeing the very pages they signed up for — unless they stayed engaged. In other words, people spent money — sometimes considerable amounts — to grow a base that now may be out of reach in most cases, unless they pay more.
© Eléonore H - Fotolia.com. Used with Permission
Second, many comparatively large pages with a wide reach really can’t afford to pay thousands of dollars per post to reach more fans. I would never really consider spending money to reach my fans because, frankly, I’m not in it for the same reasons as Coca-Cola or Starbucks. As I write this, I’m looking at my most recent post, which Facebook says I can pay $4,000 to have reach over a million people. This is ironic to me, because it already reached over a million. So what exactly would I be buying? It’s not really that clear.
Finally, Facebook indicates with Promoted Posts that fans will be told they are being promoted to because the post will appear as a “sponsored story” much the same way certain establishments appear in sites such as Yelp. But fans view any kind of sponsored or commercial post with suspicion. I know this first hand: Anytime I try to sell anything online, including the book you are now reading, fans know and take a more jaundiced view of the effort. It’s simply part of human nature, especially when very few of my other posts ask anything of the fans.
I don’t begrudge Facebook for wanting to make more money. They’re now a publicly traded company, and they have to answer to different masters than before. But Facebook should tread carefully before this becomes a huge PR problem. As pages have seen their numbers crash, many have threatened to leave Facebook in search of cheaper ways to reach fans, such as Twitter or even Google+. Or they’ll stop spending money trying to acquire fans, knowing that they have to spend money again just to reach them.
When I asked other Page owners to convey their experiences with Facebook and its EdgeRank system, I received back almost universally negative comments. Here are a handful of examples out of dozens and dozens of complaints people left in responses to my inquiry:
I AM A STAY AT HOME MOM WHO HAS WORKED TIRELESSLY IN THE LAST YEAR AND A HALF TO BUILD [MY JEWELRY BUSINESS.] I HAVE 8,300 FANS, AND NOW ONLY A FRACTION OF THEM SEE MY POSTS, EVEN WHEN I PAY. IT HAS SEVERELY AFFECTED MY BUSINESS.
I WOULD LIKEN THIS TO EXTORTION. “HEY, HERE’S TRAFFIC, BUT NOW WE’RE GOING TO TAKE IT AWAY FROM YOU AND MAKE YOU PAY FOR IT.”
AS SOMEONE WHO RUNS A FACEBOOK PAGE, I’M DISAPPOINTED THAT ANYONE WHO CHOOSES TO FOLLOW OUR PAGE HAS TO OPT-IN AFTER “LIKING” US TO HAVE OUR POSTS SHOW UP ON THEIR PAGE, ESPECIALLY SINCE THAT INFO ISN’T EXPLICITLY INCLUDED ANYWHERE.
I RUN A PAGE DESIGNED TO PROMOTE AWARENESS FOR EPILEPSY. HIT RATE HAS DROPPED. MEANWHILE, SHELL ADS (AS IN THE GAS COMPANY) KEEP APPEARING ON MY PERSONAL TIMELINE. TO SAY I’M PISSED ABOUT IT IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT.
TRAFFIC DROPPED A TON, THEN WE CHUCKED $15 DOLLARS INTO PROMOTING AND IT WENT UP BRIEFLY - I TOOK ADVANTAGE OF THIS BY LEARNING HOW TO INCREASE TRAFFIC (OURS IS DOG RESCUE AND WE ARE DEPENDENT ON BEING SEEN) AND IT WORKED FOR AWHILE AND THEN BAM! -TRAFFIC PLUMMETED EVEN LOWER THAN BEFORE. IT IS FRUSTRATING AND EXHAUSTING TRYING TO KEEP UP WITH THE BEST WAYS TO THWART THE FACEBOOK TRICKS.
I MANAGE A NOT-FOR-PROFIT ARTS PAGE AND WE’VE SEEN DRASTIC REDUCTIONS ON OUR NUMBERS. I THINK THE ANNOYANCE IS THAT WHEN YOU ‘LIKE’ A PAGE IT’S BECAUSE YOU WANT TO SEE THE CONTENT. PERHAPS, FACEBOOK NEEDS TO DEVELOP A ‘KINDA LIKE’ BUTTON. ASKING FANS TO GO BACK AND CHANGE ALL THEIR SETTINGS IS RIDICULOUS.
My own page saw some fairly drastic and worrisome collapses in reach and engagement during July and September of 2012. It was frustrating for me because this drop came at the same time Facebook launched its Promoted Pages campaign, leading me to believe that the two were connected, and that I was under pressure to pay to keep my reach up. Facebook explained that the two had nothing to do with each other, and that changes were all intended to improve user experience.
The problem of course is that as more and more real estate in the Newsfeed is purchased by companies that can afford to advertise and buy that space, fewer people will see posts from pages that they actually have liked. In order to prevent a slide in engagement, I have taken some proactive measures.
First, I remind fans periodically that the more engaged they are, the more likely I will appear in their feeds. Second, I asked fans to add me to their “interests” so that they can view my post together with other interests at their leisure. And third, I lately have begun telling fans to “Get Notifications” of my posts, so that they receive an alert that I posted and then can go to my page for the latest. The last option appears to have made some real difference in my engagement numbers, because people are not limited to being online exactly when my post would cross their feed — they can go back and look on their own time later.
In November of 2012, just days before this book went to print, Facebook rolled out a new feature called “Pages Feed” which users could select. The idea behind Pages feed is that users who want to see more of their “liked” pages’ posts could filter their feed so that only posts from pages (and not friends) appeared in their feed. This is a welcome development which goes some way towards answering the critics. But for folks who have “liked” many pages, this will probably do little to increase the visibility of small pages. Nor is it yet clear whether people will enable this filter on a regular basis. Still, it is great to see Facebook responding to user feedback. Some press stories credit my vocal criticism of Facebook’s Newsfeed for this new feature, but I imagine it was in the works long before I even raised the issue publicly.
Because my posts already reach a relatively high percentage of my fans, who share it with their networks whenever they interact with me, I’m admittedly something of an unlikely critic of Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm. But let me be clear: I am concerned primarily with transparency, not with the actual algorithm itself, which appears to do its job. I personally can’t think of any better way for Facebook to assign relevance to posts and determine who should see them.
This doesn’t mean, however, that the solution is something like Promoted Pages. If Facebook intends to keep the program, it needs to be completely upfront with page owners about how few of their fans actually see each post now and what they can expect after they pay for a post. For example, if EdgeRank rewards interactivity, pages might want to limit their promoted posts to those that could go highly viral but need an extra push. Page owners thus need to educate themselves about how Facebook works, especially before spending a lot of money on Promoted Posts.
My outspokenness about Facebook and willingness to voice my concerns has gotten me into some hot water. For example, I was accused flat out by prominent technology blogger Robert Scoble of whining that I want
all
my posts seen by
all
my fans. This simply isn’t true. I know that such a demand is both impractical and rather greedy given the limited space on each user’s feed. Scoble also accused me of creating so much Internet “noise” with my posting that I ought to “sit down and shut up.” Well, I didn’t become an advocate for equality and civil rights by sitting down and shutting up, so I was not about to do that. Scoble even admitted in his tirade that, though he hates my posts, his wife enjoys them and shares them with him all the time. I put out this cheeky tweet in response:
