I'm guessing that their move in 2015 to put the kibosh on organizations using their Facebook account to self-promote will have a larger impact on this sort of thing.
They say it's in the name of reducing spam on your news feed, but something tells me that it's just a ruse to route that type of behavior to paid advertisements and to end the free ride for small businesses.
FB is pretty solid with ads these days. I'm seeing blocks of sponsored stuff every 3-7 posts. Considering how many non-sponsored posts aren't really interesting to me, and how many repeats I see, they basically have me checking in constantly by dangling the possibility of new, relevant stuff behind that darn red world icon. It's a bit scary to think that I view this as an important communication tool and it's so riddled with ads, but I also understand we don't exactly live in utopia. Some friends just can't easily be reached in other ways.
>They say it's in the name of reducing spam on your news feed, but something tells me that it's just a ruse to route that type of behavior to paid advertisements and to end the free ride for small businesses.
I hear this a lot from small businesses....but really, I'm not interested in most things posted by pages I "like".
Facebook does a pretty good job of gauging my interest. I'm very interested in 2-3 pages I liked, and Facebook shows me all of their stuff, usually at the top of my feed.
Other stuff is sporadic, usually just the most popular of that pages posts. The rest is stuff from my friends.
Why should it be different? It's not like I have the attention to see every post from pages I've liked.
So, nothing to back that claim. No data or announcement from Facebook. Just a remark about external web links being shit on mobile and that's it. Not even a decent argument there. It's like saying elephants will grow tall necks in 2005 because of some random reason.
The author is a finance blogger at Reuters (http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/) and they asked for a 2015 prediction. You're right, I don't see anything to back up the prediction.
While I agree with the author's point that anyone who is not Facebook will be screwed, I disagree with this part: "Facebook has two natural constituencies: its advertisers and its users."
Facebook does have two constituencies: its advertisers and its shareholders. There has been very little improvement for users in the past few years. While the site has become filled with more and more advertising, users have less and less control over their newsfeed. After years of changing the setting, I don't even have the option to show posts by Most Recent any more.
Meanwhile, small businesses, who helped build up the Facebook brand are being forced to pay to reach their own fans. I hope this misalignment of incentives really bites them hard.
If you're referring to the mobile app (iOS), there is a way to change the setting to Most Recent posts; however, it is buried and difficult. You're right here, Facebook wants full control so they CAN put more ads on the users' news feed.
Why is content so often bad on mobile? I tried reading a page by Forbes today on my moto E, and it didn't even scroll right.
I'm guessing complex analytics has something to do with slow page load speed, but why is so much effort put into making an interface that degrades user experience compared to simply displaying the text with formatting? Web sites used to look fine, AND work.
I suspect I'm missing something and that this behavior helps sites somehow. But I'm at a loss to say how that is.
Well, true, there is no data to back it, so it's pure speculation. However, if your all business is based on an external service that you have no control on has that has no legal nor contractual obligation to you, then you should be ready to pivot quickly if and when they take that away from you. And you should plan to have the cushion to do so.
Am I the only one thinking this is not new? There are many articles about such trend with Facebook strategy. Companies either starting to pay up for ads or post more meaning posts to make it viral naturally. Anything bait-like or low quality like-me, like-this,... will be dead.
Next, a push for bigger mobile screens to make room for more ads.
(That's the biggest issue on mobile - where to put the ads. There's almost no way to have a non-annoying ad on mobile. This is a vulnerability of all ad-based mobile services.)
I can't wait until phone screens are as big as laptops and then some genius comes up with the idea to add a hardware keyboard. Then the circle will start again.
There is no question mark on the title of the page itself, so why is there one here? And even if it was a question, it violates Betteridge's law of headlines [0] in that if it was a question, then the answer would have been no, but in this article Felix is arguing that will be the case.
Did you read it? It predicts that Facebook will stop sending a firehose of traffic to outside websites. It says nothing about the death or popularity of Facebook itself.
facebook is by its own nature destined to fail and be replaced. The process has already started and it is a matter of time before it reaches a tipping point, everyone and his dog is predicting the demise of facebook because at some point it will happen and then they'll be able to say they said so.
[+] [-] glitch13|11 years ago|reply
http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/11/news-feed-fyi-reducing-o...
They say it's in the name of reducing spam on your news feed, but something tells me that it's just a ruse to route that type of behavior to paid advertisements and to end the free ride for small businesses.
[+] [-] themodelplumber|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] graeme|11 years ago|reply
I hear this a lot from small businesses....but really, I'm not interested in most things posted by pages I "like".
Facebook does a pretty good job of gauging my interest. I'm very interested in 2-3 pages I liked, and Facebook shows me all of their stuff, usually at the top of my feed.
Other stuff is sporadic, usually just the most popular of that pages posts. The rest is stuff from my friends.
Why should it be different? It's not like I have the attention to see every post from pages I've liked.
[+] [-] eknkc|11 years ago|reply
Am I missing something here?
[+] [-] balls187|11 years ago|reply
Yes. Facebook announced updates to their Newsfeed algorithm to reduce the amount of "promotional" content people see in their feeds.
https://www.facebook.com/business/news/update-to-facebook-ne...
[+] [-] mtmail|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanv|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sparkzilla|11 years ago|reply
Facebook does have two constituencies: its advertisers and its shareholders. There has been very little improvement for users in the past few years. While the site has become filled with more and more advertising, users have less and less control over their newsfeed. After years of changing the setting, I don't even have the option to show posts by Most Recent any more.
Meanwhile, small businesses, who helped build up the Facebook brand are being forced to pay to reach their own fans. I hope this misalignment of incentives really bites them hard.
[+] [-] dennisnedry|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] graeme|11 years ago|reply
Why is content so often bad on mobile? I tried reading a page by Forbes today on my moto E, and it didn't even scroll right.
I'm guessing complex analytics has something to do with slow page load speed, but why is so much effort put into making an interface that degrades user experience compared to simply displaying the text with formatting? Web sites used to look fine, AND work.
I suspect I'm missing something and that this behavior helps sites somehow. But I'm at a loss to say how that is.
[+] [-] erispoe|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qhoc|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|11 years ago|reply
(That's the biggest issue on mobile - where to put the ads. There's almost no way to have a non-annoying ad on mobile. This is a vulnerability of all ad-based mobile services.)
[+] [-] Igglyboo|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] markveronda|11 years ago|reply
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
[+] [-] TazeTSchnitzel|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bduerst|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aloha|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greglindahl|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bigbugbag|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taternuts|11 years ago|reply