
Facebook, I want my friends back - vospeweb
http://dangerousminds.net/comments/facebook_i_want_my_friends_back
======
chaz
If you're posting 10-16 posts a day and you forcibly put each of these into
100% of your fans, you're going to shrink your base. If you did that to me,
I'm going to hide or Unlike your page. If you emailed me those posts, I'd be
hitting unsubscribe in half a day. The Facebook News Feed isn't an RSS reader,
and the Like button isn't Subscribe.

I would suggest just posting once a day, and using the Promoted Posts for the
occasional big news that you want to make sure everyone reads.

Facebook pages isn't a panacea for brands or publishers -- not by a long shot.
That panacea is one of those Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas.

~~~
ry0ohki
So what? Annoying pages can get un-liked, and the problem will work itself
out. But if someone is a "Fan" of the brand and wants to see all of their 15
posts in a day, it's frustrating they can't. The default in Facebook is always
"Most Popular", and even when I change it to "Most Recent" (to see the long
tail of my friends activities, since I don't trust Facebook), Facebook always
sets it back.

~~~
scott_s
As a rule, I don't "Like" sites, but I was unaware that it actually meant
"subscribe me to this."

~~~
Splines
That bugs me too. I like a lot of things, but I don't want to hear or see any
of them in my timeline.

I used to click "Like" on various things in Facebook, but after starting to
see them in my feed I immediately un-Liked them. I'm willing to tell my
friends I like Logitech keyboards, but I'm _not_ willing to see whatever posts
the Logitech PR decides to write. If I'm interested to learn about what new
keyboards/mice there are in the market, I'll find it myself, thanks.

Clicking "Like" used to be a fun, whimsical thing. Now it's been turned into a
marketing vehicle (I don't fault FB for doing that), so now it's more like a
"Spam me please" button. It feels like more of a business exchange rather than
an expression of my preferences.

~~~
sirmarksalot
This is a tricky thing. Facebook's business model, and its value proposition
to advertisers to a large degree depends on oversharing, and your "Likes" are
an example of this. If somebody asked me if I wanted my email subscriptions
broadcast to all my friends, I would say "heck no." But if nobody agreed to
share their subscriptions, then how would advertisers get word of mouth?

So they phrase it a bit differently. You don't subscribe, you "like." And your
likes and dislikes are a part of your personality, which is something you want
to share with your friends. The subscription is just a side effect of liking,
and it allows marketers to use your name to spread their brand among your
friends and acquaintances.

If they just called a spade a spade, it would be a disaster for them.

~~~
rolux
In this case, to call a spade a spade would be to call EdgeRank a spam filter,
and "promoted posts" a paid option to circumvent it - right?

~~~
richardjordan
Nice. I'm stealing this line. :-)

------
tomasien
Look I can understand the "oh it's so convenient that you can now pay to
promote your posts" but the "turning down the volume" on the Newsfeed was done
because our Newsfeeds were getting overrun. People added too many friends,
thousands more than the 150 it's been proven we can reasonably empathize with,
and people were doing more and more on the network.

You can STILL see posts of your favorite bands by going to their pages, which
is how you used to have to find updates: by checking for them. The Newsfeed is
new, and it's not a right.

~~~
kscaldef
I object to Facebook making this decision for me. I _didn't_ add too many
friends. My newsfeed _wasn't_ overrun. Yeah, I had to hide a few annoying
Apps, but no big deal.

And then, one day, I stopped seeing posts from lots of people, including many
of the people I most wanted to see posts from. It took a while before I even
realized this was happening. Then I slowly had to go through and fix the
settings for people to tell FB that "yes, really, show me all the posts". And,
still, every couple of days Facebook forgets that I've set my sort to "Most
Recent" and goes back to "Top Stories" and not showing me everything. This
gets tiresome, to say the least.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>I object to Facebook making this decision for me.

Facebook makes a lot of decisions for you. It's a free service, so it's their
prerogative. If you don't like it, you can always deactivate your account like
I did.

~~~
martin-adams
For a free service is sure does come at a cost. I get people I don't know
commenting on photos of my 1 year old because a friend posted it to their
wall.

~~~
jamesjguthrie
If you don't like your friends sharing your photos you can _disable_ sharing.

~~~
martin-adams
Maybe, but doesn't help when it's actually their photo, just a photo which I
have a vested interest in who see it. It's also not my job to educate my
friends how to share content because I'd only end up upsetting them.

------
jrockway
If I'm reading this correctly, the problem is that something that the author
thinks should be free costs money, so Facebook is now "demanding that a $365
million dollar ransom gets collected from all the Mom & Pop businesses who use
Facebook."

Uh huh. "Mom & Pop business" seems to be the new "won't somebody please think
of the children" line designed to extinguish all rational thought. I'm getting
a little tired of it.

(I'll save my rant on why I think most Mom & Pop businesses should be out of
business for another day. I have to say I'm amused when I see a restaurant in
my neighborhood apply a bunch of signs that say "absolutely no laptop use" and
then go out of business a month later. Idealism is a bitch.)

~~~
tensor
You talk about rational thought, but then go off on a tangent hoping all small
business disappears? I'm curious what has made you so hateful towards both
people who hold some ideal (that you don't share), and towards small
businesses.

In particular, the best restaurants in the world are small, not chains. Chains
are always mediocre by their very nature. Unlike in software, which can be
replicated and exported perfectly, restaurants are about their chefs,
something you cannot easily replicate and export. Even small finer dining
chains vary hugely by location.

~~~
reinhardt
> In particular, the best restaurants in the world are small.

So are the worst.

~~~
tensor
Sure, and the market won't likely be kind to them.

My point is that it's illogical to "think most [small businesses] should be
out of business". By their continued existence and success we can see first
hand that they deserve to be in business. There are even really high end and
successful places that ban cell phones and still do well. Sometimes places do
well _because_ of quirks like these. Other times not. There are many
variables.

The market behaves as it does, despite what anybody thinks it _should_ do.

~~~
theflubba
Thank you, now I know there is at least one hacker news user who knows how
markets work. Faith in humanity restored. Not really.

------
quanticle
> _'I despise it.'_ Hear that beleaugered holders of Facebook stock? _That
> kind of talk would make my blood run cold. How many companies can you name
> that you_ actively despise?

Actually? Quite a few. I despise Comcast. I despise the big-4 cell phone
companies (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint). I despise the oil companies (BP,
Chevron, Texaco, et. al). Notice a pattern? Despite my (and presumably many
others) despising these companies, they are all _enormously profitable_. I
think Facebook has got to the state where they at least think they have a
monopoly on their users' social graphs and are willing to raise access prices
sky-high. I'm not surprised it happened. I'm surprised it took this long.

~~~
dredmorbius
Sprint Nextel aren't exactly profitable:
[http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AS&fstype=ii&e...](http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AS&fstype=ii&ei=YWaIUIidLeTgiAKbHw)

I believe most of the others are.

The more salient characteristic of these companies is that they 1) dominate
their respective markets (as monopolies or one of a small number of
oligopolistic suppliers), and 2) are spectacularly unresponsive to
customer/user sentiments.

"We don't care, we don't have to. We're the Phone Company".

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9e3dTOJi0o>

~~~
quanticle
>1) dominate their respective markets (as monopolies or one of a small number
of oligopolistic suppliers),

Check. Most people can't be bothered to maintain a presence on more than two
social networks. So Facebook, Twitter (and in a distant third place) Google
Plus have a de-facto oligolopoly on users' ad viewing. And given Facebook's
enormous userbase, it's not exactly convenient for users to switch away, due
to network effects.

>2) are spectacularly unresponsive to customer/user sentiments.

Every change Facebook has made lately has been vociferously opposed by its
userbase, usually because it erodes privacy and reduces the perceived level of
control that people have over the broadcast of their status updates.

>"We don't care, we don't have to. We're the Phone Company".

Replace "Phone Company" with Facebook and that may as well be a paraphrase of
Mark Zuckerberg.

------
patmcguire
I could tell the general path the HN discussion was going to take - free
service, free country, etc. - but the bigger issue is all the companies that
have been paying Facebook millions for page like campaigns.

I'd be angry if I'd given Facebook money under the old system only for them to
change the value of what I got from them. The basic takeaway is that the rules
that were in place where I might be willing to pay $2 for a like - a person
who likes your page sees your post - had to be changed because there wasn't
that much user attention in existence. Now it's been inflated to be worth
about a tenth as many views, which is what you were buying, only Facebook
called it a "Like" and it somehow means something completely different now.

I guess the moral of the story is don't invest in anything whose value can be
arbitrarily changed by someone else.

~~~
sarah2079
This is a really good point. If I had spent money on advertising in the past
to get more likes I would feel pretty cheated. I wonder what impact these
changes are having on sales for that type of advertising?

------
stephengillie
Were they your friends or your customers? Or were your customers _our actual
inventory, what we sell to advertisers_?

You built a business inside someone's shopping mall, they started charging
rent, so you complain. And at $4 CPK for promoted posts[1], you'll find FB
advertising to be slightly cheaper.

[1] CPK aka CPM aka cost per 1000 views. Calculated from: _To reach 100% of of
our 50k+ Facebook fans they’d charge us $200 per post._ Edit: $200 / 50 = $4,
thanks Ryan.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Wouldn't it be a $4 CPK?

------
scott_meade
"But I can’t pay them $2000 a day and $672,000 a year for the exact same
product that I was getting for free back in March!"

Another in a long, long list of customers whose plans fall apart when a free
or one-price-for-life service realizes it cannot continue with business as
usual. Today's pro tip: Do not build your livelihood around a third-party's
free service. Eventually that service will either 1.) shut down, 2.) kick you
out of their ecosystem, or 3.) start charging you.

I'm not sure what is more surprising: that people continue to build businesses
with these Achilles heels or that they seem shocked when the third-party
changes the game.

------
SCdF
I'm not too concerned about this from a marketing standpoint. It's unfortunate
that people started to view 'likes' as an RSS feed replacement, but that
opinion will change now most stuff doesn't get through.

What really frustrates me is that I'm missing entirely non commercial messages
from my _actual_ friends. I've missed posts from my _girlfriend_ for godssake,
it's ridiculous.

I understand that they need to make money, but the _entire_ reason I and
others are on facebook is to connect with our friends. Facebook needs to allow
us to do that and then augment our experience with monied options, not imply
that most of your friends will never see your posts unless you open up.

Don't make me go back to email. It's still there, waiting, full of delicious
SMTP guaranteed delivery.

~~~
AustinGibbons
Out of curiosity, do you have your girlfriend as a starred user? Is your
pattern of facebook interaction notably higher than with other friends?

------
sequoia
The whole premise of this article is "Facebook gave me this access to their
platform for free hitherto, so _I'm entitled_ to this access on those same
terms in perpetuity; it's unfair for them to start charging for it." I don't
see the author explaini _why_ s/he is entitled to these same terms forever.

~~~
timmaah
I think this quote explains it nicely:

>I used to get a great deal from using Facebook—but I understood it to be a
two-way reciprocal arrangement because I was driving traffic back to Facebook
as well, and reinforcing their brand awareness with prominent widgets on our
blog

~~~
jarek
Now Facebook has lots of brand awareness and decides it could live without any
individual blog's widgets. What an unpredictable turn of events!

------
joe_the_user
Serious bait-and-switch in the title.

He want control of his _fans_ , his like-ees. Not his (Facebook) "friends".
Most of us know that is not a bug but a feature.

Now the problem that Facebook makes it to share one's email address with one's
own real Facebook friends is annoying and something to complain about. But
trying to leverage that to complain about not being able to push your feed is
problematic. This is exactly what use Facebook _for_. An experience where you
aren't bombarded with everyone's BS.

~~~
makomk
Facebook does exactly the same thing with actual friends, though. Same
monetization strategy too.

------
padobson
User: Oh, hello Facebook. Can you help me find out what my friends are doing?

Facebook: Oh, definitely. Just have a look at your NewsFeed and see what
they're doing.

User: Wait, I've got 2000 friends. Why am I only getting a NewsFeed post twice
an hour?

Facebook: Because we decided that's the information that you're most likely to
want.

User: But what if I want to know what everyone's doing at any specific moment?

Twitter: Can I be of assistance?

User: Oh, hello Twitter.

~~~
alexkus
For now yes, but Twitter could do exactly the same thing at some point in the
future; they need money too. Whatever rug you get comfy on can be pulled from
under you at a moment's notice.

IPOs/monetization/capitalism has far more power than the user-base.

I'd love to see a bunch of not-for-profit[1] startups to come along to replace
the likes of paypal/twitter/stripe/etc.

1\. For example, supported by just enough injected advertising to break even,
or fees set at a percentage that just covers costs rather than going after
piles of profit.

~~~
padobson
I couldn't agree more that these companies need to find better ways to
monetize. Watching Zynga slow to a crawl at the same time they represent 14%
of Facebook's revenues is proving we haven't found the best business model for
social media yet.

My point, though, was that they're making the product worse. The lack of a
creative business model to monetize a user base while keeping the quality of
the product high is disheartening. These are some of the best minds in
consumer internet - which doesn't give me high hopes for consumer internet.

------
DanBC
> At Dangerous Minds, we post anywhere from 10 to 16 items per day, fewer on
> the weekends.

This is why I don't like many pages, and it's why FB needs clear and easy to
use controls for what does or doesn't show up on my wall.

~~~
code_duck
I think you mean 'News Feed', not 'wall'. Wall is the old name for your page.
They are now called Timelines.

~~~
lmm
And Eurasia has always been at war with Eastasia? I really see no need to let
facebook control language like this.

~~~
code_duck
Huh? It's the name of their site feature. Someone has to call it something so
we know what we're talking about... that's the basis of language.

~~~
lmm
We all knew what the greatgrandparent was talking about when he said "wall". I
see no reason to "correct" him just because facebook have decided to call it
that anymore.

~~~
code_duck
Okay, but... just to help you out a bit... the News Feed was never called a
Wall, actually. One is about you, the other shows posts by others.

------
veb
I don't use promoted posts, and yet I still manage to get this:
<http://cl.ly/image/2t0b340Y3h2S>

I only have 300,000 likes too. ;-) Basically, the trick is engagement. Give
the audience what they want, when they want. Timing matters, pictures matter.
Do it right, and you don't need to pay anything.

P.S. Making money from advertisements, pfft how ancient and boring!
_shamelessplug_ use Teespring instead.

------
engtech
I had hoped this article was going to be able how to convince your friends to
communicate with a medium other than Facebook.

~~~
tomasien
This post misses the biggest logical point that is vitally needed: there was
no Newsfeed in the beginning. At all.

Then there was a Newsfeed. Then it showed more than just wall posts. Then
there were TOO MANY things on it, so they scaled it back. The Newsfeed was an
experiment, and it worked, but it needed tweaking. That's why this happened.

That they now allow you to pay to promote is secondary to the original origin
of why the Newsfeed works like it works. I'm glad to have the option to pay to
promote and I'm glad larger fan bases need to pay more. Now, when I have
something legitimate to announce, I can pay to do it. When I just want to
engage, I better engage well or else I'll get buried. GOOD!

~~~
dasil003
> _That they now allow you to pay to promote is secondary to the original
> origin of why the Newsfeed works like it works._

Sure they had to scale it back, but the conflict of interests is real. People
don't necessarily want to see only posts from those who are willing to pay.
It's not that I begrudge them the opportunity to make money, but I think this
clearly weakens Facebook's usefulness to users.

It's one thing if Facebook is filtering to show me the posts with the most
organic engagement in order to decrease noise in my feed. It's completely
different if some of the pages I follow have very little chance of reaching me
based solely on their inability or unwillingness to pay for access. OA
hyperbole notwithstanding, I think Facebook are overreaching here.

~~~
tomasien
Company A changes Company A's product to support Company A is not a conflict
of interest. I know people feel very strongly about Facebook and how it should
act, but they are a company and a good one at that imo. People begrudging them
for the individuals promoted posts is one thing that I can understand, but
begrudging them charging brands for whom they've provided a platform FULL of
amazing, free services?

~~~
dasil003
Did you read my comment? I explicitly said I am not begrudging them the
opportunity to make money however they want. If you want to quibble over the
denotation of "conflict of interests" fine, let me put it this way:

It's not sustainable for Facebook to degrade the usefulness of their service
in this way for a short-term cash gain. 15-20% throughput to fans is so low as
to confound expectations, and I'm saying this will bite them ass.

~~~
tomasien
A much fairer critique. The argument over conflict of interest isn't trivial,
the true meaning of that phrase denotes something pretty serious.

------
drone
Sounds like a brilliant product plan to me...

"See what we can do for you? See the traffic we can drive and link to you?
Want more? Choose your level of traffic, choose your price."

The article makes the assumption that 3rd-party businesses that have been
suckling at the teat of the social graph are the value to the facebook users.
They're not. The users, the actual _people_ are - businesses are just there to
help pay for the whole thing, and follow the personal users. I say this as a
business owner who uses facebook heavily, and occasionally pays them for the
right to get a little bit back out of them.

I've yet to see a single person in my timeline say "I'd stop coming to
facebook if all of these businesses didn't have pages here."

------
tankbot
Ok, I admit I didn't read the whole linked 'article'. This was because no less
than 3 ads containing movies/audio auto started when I loaded the page. Anger
spike. Back button. Fuck you, dangerousminds.net.

Using your blog or whatever to make specious (I assume) arguments about what
someone else should/should not be doing with their business is your
prerogative. Just don't expect people to actually listen to what you're saying
while you beat them over the head with ads for trucks and cooking shows.

Again, I didn't read the whole thing, or even half before I bailed. But am I
wrong in assuming this site uses the popular activity of Facebashing(tm) as a
ploy to shove ads at unsuspecting visitors?

------
graue
This post is pretty overboard with its exaggeration. But one thing I find
interesting is the concept that Facebook is a paid publishing platform.
They'll deliver your posts to 15% of your followers as a freebie, but to reach
100%, you pay. And I hadn't thought of it that way before.

That perspective actually gives me increased hope for Tent
(<https://tent.io>), the decentralized social networking protocol that could
one day be a Facebook alternative. When Tent was announced here on HN, a
common criticism was that if you're popular, and you host your Tent server
yourself, you end up paying a lot for the bandwidth cost of sending each post
to thousands or millions of followers. Whereas the perception is that on a
centralized social network you can send a post to millions of followers for
free.

For now, that's still the case on Twitter, but on Facebook, apparently not. If
you really want significant reach, you pay to publish even to people who
already (by liking) signed up to follow you. So the situations aren't actually
that different. I guess there really is no free lunch.

------
cjc1083
Facebook would be far more successful, and a better experience, if they simply
charged for the service. Even a nominal fee of 20$ per year will exceed their
add revenue. Potentially charge users only 5$ per year, and business a larger
amount based on some metric.

The add supported model is terrible for social networks and needs to go. If
you can afford a computer, smartphone, etc. Then you can pay 5-20$/year for an
account.

Free limited accounts for people <18 years old, which have limited access to
adult content? (Idea, but may work to both hook future customers, and protect
kids)

------
brudgers
I'm not seeing how this is unfair. Facebook is a business and the companies
which set up fan pages are not typically charities (and so what if they were).

Facebook has a level of PR software as service which is free. They have
another which is premium. If a company wants to spam their "fans," they have
to pay.

If a business wants to have a high level of control over communications with
it's fans, customers, likers, or whatever they are called, there's no free
lunch. Either pay a third party (e.g. Facebook) or invest the hard work.

~~~
msrpotus
Absolutely. This isn't a change from 100% of fans seeing a post to 0% of fans
seeing a post, either. Even when Facebook just chronology to organize the
Newsfeed, plenty of people would miss a post just because they weren't at the
computer at the time. This is just a different, maybe better, maybe worse, way
of organizing the Newsfeed.

------
mcantor
How is anyone even surprised about this? If you're making money off of
_someone else's_ platform, it's only a matter of time before they're gonna ask
for a cut.

------
wtvanhest
OK, I get that DangerousMinds posts a ridiculous amount and would definitely
be deleted from my account and probably should have to pay for advertising on
an ad platform, but what about other use cases:

I run a nonprofit alumni association here in Boston and I use FB as a way to
update alumni of changes in events so that we can limit the numbers of emails
we send. We were using Facebook as sort of an information platform and don't
profit or make any money in any way.

I am very careful to not post too much, even entering in to specific
agreements with the national alumni association so that they do not to post
ads on our page for their merchandise etc.

What am I supposed to do now? Should I pay out of my pocket to reach users who
definitely want to be reached already?

Facebook provides a great service, and they should be compensated, but I will
now have to look at other options to potentially reach our group.

\--- And the flip side of this is that I would like to see posts from everyone
I am friends with that I haven't explicitly blocked from my feed, going
through all those names to re-add them seems like an amazing amount of trouble
for me.

\--- The OP is hard to sympathize with, but he/she has a good point.

~~~
rohansingh
For something like an association or a team organization, a Facebook group
would make a lot more sense. That lets you make sure your messages get to
everyone.

~~~
wtvanhest
I hope you have the opportunity to read this and reply (or anyone else that
knows more about this). My understanding of groups is that they are more for
short term active discussions where as pages are better for long term
relationships. Also, I don't think you can add events to pages, where you can
for groups.

Am I looking at this wrong?

------
jonknee
They're doing the same thing with non-fan pages. If you want your content to
go to your friends you now have to pay for the privilege. It's nuts. I haven't
been on Facebook since I saw this, they can keep their social graph.

~~~
natrius
Facebook has enough data to know how close you are to people, and there's even
a "Close Friends" list you can add people to in order to see all of their
posts. Your friends who want to see your posts will see them. Those who are
ambivalent might not, and you can pay to make it show up for them.

~~~
lotharbot
Facebook's data doesn't tell them how close you actually are to people, only
how often you like/share/respond to their content -- and how many other people
like their stuff.

The guy who spams 30 lame political memes per day, who I might argue with a
couple times a week, gets treated like my best friend. My mom, who posts maybe
once a month and has a limited friends list, gets hidden away in the deep
recesses of the system.

~~~
natrius
Has that actually happened to you? I doubt it, especially if you've indicated
she's your mother on Facebook. People who post rarely would show up more often
when they do post in any reasonable weighting scheme.

"Close" was a loaded word to use. Facebook knows how often you interact with
someone's content, how often you view someone's profile, how closely connected
your social network is with someone, etc. Facebook's algorithm is _working_
for people, which I think is a valid counter to the folks who think all their
posts should show up for all of their friends.

~~~
lotharbot
> _"Has that actually happened to you?"_

It has. Yes, all of the relevant family connections are listed (my parents, my
7 siblings, and myself form a complete graph[0].) It's not just my mother,
either -- a few wedding photos of a family member, posted today, didn't show
up in my main news feed (which I always set to chronological rather than top
stories, and which I check several times per day.) The photos should have been
at the "n hours ago" point in the list, but I only discovered them because I
was searching for examples for this thread. (I thought the missing post from
my mom was a better example, though.)

FaceBook's algorithm seems to work for some people, particularly those with
particular usage patterns. But its failure modes can be quite obnoxious. They
provide some tools that allow some degree of fine-tuning, but even having
manually set the "show me everything" options, certain content falls through
the cracks.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_graph>

------
gruseom
Dangerous Minds is probably the best blog out there on the history of pop
culture. (If there's one that is good or better, I'd like to know about it.) I
started reading it regularly after running across it from three or four
different angles. The main author can be shrill about controversies, but he's
vastly knowledgeable about every nook and cranny of the last 50 years' worth
of hipness.

------
KaoruAoiShiho
He's confused, he thinks he's facebook's customer. Facebook's customers are
its users. Keeping the uexperience up is the first priority.

~~~
gbaygon
Facebook users aren't its customers, facebook users are its products. Better
think again.

~~~
KaoruAoiShiho
This "product" meme is inaccurate and misleading. You are the product in the
same way that Lebron James is the NBA's product, the same way that a top
partner at Goldman Sacs is the product, the same way that Justin Bieber is the
product, and the same way that you yourself is the product every time you
apply for a job interview or raise funds.

Being the "product" gives you a great position in your relationship with the
company and incentivizes them to treat you very well.

Fact of the matter is, and is as demonstrably evident, FB can cares much less
about keeping this advertiser happy than about keeping its users happy.

~~~
king_jester
> This "product" meme is inaccurate and misleading. You are the product in the
> same way that Lebron James is the NBA's product, the same way that a top
> partner at Goldman Sacs is the product, the same way that Justin Bieber is
> the product, and the same way that you yourself is the product every time
> you apply for a job interview or raise funds.

I think this comparison is valid, but realize that most people are not a
Lebron James or a Justin Bieber and they have very little ability to influence
a company directly. In fact, for record labels and the NBA, there have been
numerous examples of smaller players getting a bad deal or being screwed over.
Being a user or consumer of a service does not mean that the service provider
is looking to treat you well.

------
Lasher
This doesn't make sense to me as a user or as a page admin.

As a user, if my friends post something I want to see it. If my daughter's
karate school or my favorite band posts something, I want to see it. If
they're spammy, I'll unsubscribe. I would like to make this decision for
myself, not have it made for me. If it has to be made for me, I would prefer
it be made based on some approximation of relevance and quality, not because
someone paid $5 to spam me with it.

As an advertiser, Facebook has consistently promoted ads as a way to build a
following via the 'like' button. So I pay Facebook to gain exposure to build a
following of 10,000 fans and now I have to pay again if I want to reach them
all?? Classic bait and switch. I wonder how many past advertisers would have
paid to build up their 'likes' if they had been told very clearly up front
"Just because someone likes your page does not mean they will see your posts
in their news feed".

~~~
macspoofing
>So I pay Facebook to gain exposure to build a following of 10,000 fans and
now I have to pay again if I want to reach them all??

There's a disconnect between what you think "Like" should be, what Facebook
thinks "Like" should be and what the user thinks "Like" should be.

I never saw "Like" as being akin to signing up for a mailing list. Certainly
not to the extent that I would be spammed with however many posts per day each
"Liked" service serves up. It seems like Facebook agrees with me. I think they
made a reasonable decision here for the good of the end-user.

------
mindstab
Author Warren Ellis also noticed this recently when digging into how to
promote his new book:

<http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=14404>

His conclusion? Not Facebook

------
fkdjs
I haven't logged into facebook for a long time but this seems to be what's
happening.

x) Disallow users from merely being a fan of the page, instead replacing that
with "like"

x) Now make it so businesses can post to their page and the post shows up in
the newsfeed for those who like the page. Previously only friend updates were
shown. So liking a page has the side effect of getting spam by the company.

x) Facebook has now successfully facilitated spam, which is necessary for

x) Their new spam-prevention algorithm, leading to the end goal:

x) Now that Facebook has facilitated spam and we accept limited posts, the
antispam filter can be circumvented by paying Facebook.

Voila, Facebook is now the post office, and spammers pay the post office to
bulk spam you. Imagine if you went to local businesses and said, "Hi, I like
you guys", that resulted in spam to your snailmail mailbox. You said, "Cut
that out, that's wrong." So they fixed the problem they created, but now that
the businesses are hooked, they can charge them for the ability to send out
spam.

Facebook could easily make it so users are in charge of their filter, but this
is counter to how Facebook wants to make money, so the UI is horrid for this
and no one does this in practice. Imagine a UI where users rank friends of
order of importance, with an easy UI, and the most important friends of mine
are the ones who I am more likely to see. O wait, I have just described g+.
Facebook will never have such an intuitive interface("close friend" is
horrid), where you the burden of filtering is put on the user. Facebook wants
to control that filter.

Eventually it will get to the point where you don't even need to like a page,
you will get spam from the highest bidder, decided by auction. One of the main
purposes of 'like' was to get users accepting communication from companies,
once that was done, then they went in to monetize the link, before that it was
just friend to friend chit chat, which doesn't pay the bills.

------
code_duck
Absolutely - I find the utility of Facebook vastly decreased by the fact that
my News Feed is so heavily filtered, automatically, and poorly. I want to see
_everything by everyone on my friends list_. I do not want some algorithm to
go through and decide what it thinks I'm interested in, because it is wrong.

That's about my consumption. On the other end, I have a friend, an artist with
5,000+ friends. He told me that the engagement on his posts dropped
drastically, from like 200-300 'likes' per photo to something like 20 earlier
this year, and as such he's considering not bothering to use the site any
longer. Apparently Facebook thinks those people aren't interested in his
content? Or they want him to start paying. That isn't going to happen.

------
thetrumanshow
Interesting that Facebook has quietly evolved into what is basically an
alternative for email list marketing. On the plus side, they are effectively
training businesses to see the value of such things. Given that a certain % of
those folks aren't going to want to pay Facebook due to their bait and switch
tactics, I would expect companies like Constant Contact to be sitting on the
verge of another round of explosive growth.

------
vbo
I keep bumping into this reference to facebook acknowledging only 15% of
"fans" will see a given post, but I've never found an official mention of
this. Where is this information coming from and what was the context in which
it was mentioned?

What follows is speculation, but it's easy to imagine that out of a total
fanbase, only a certain percentage "catch" your post while it's fresh, before
it's buried behind newer stuff coming in from the ever-increasing number of
pages people like. While it may have been the case that back in the day the
response one got from posting something on a facebook page was much better
than it is now, it's also true that facebook was never as popular as it is
today and that users' newsfeeds were never as busy as they are now. And as
people subscribe to multiple publishers and their attention gets diluted, you
can't expect their engagement with all of these pages to remain at pre-growth
levels (or grow).

There's another twist to this. Too many posts from pages thumping activity
from friends may alienate users. How do you balance these two types of
information? Someone's going to get less airtime, and since (I assume) the
bulk of posts comes from pages, they get silenced based on whether or not you
interacted with them recently and whatever other criteria facebook can come up
with. Same for friends you don't care much for.

Whether or not facebook can be more transparent with regards to how it
determines which posts to show and which to hide is another issue. Does the
average Joe care? Will he mess things up if given controls that are too
advanced? Note that Facebook doesn't censor information, it merely filters
what you see by default. You can still go to individual pages or profiles and
see their full activity.

There also seems to be a backlash against any commercial endeavour facebook
may have. "Facebook is selling your information!" - is it? where can I buy
this information? is it really selling in the sense that most people would
understand? No. But that's the term that is being used. "Facebook is making
people pay for airtime!" well, kinda. Personally I think that should be
"Facebook is making people pay for ADDITIONAL airtime" for all the reasons
stated above. Maybe they got into this mess due to poor communication but I
don't buy the "broken on purpose" argument. That's against facebook's interest
in the long term.

I don't mean to defend facebook, just bring into discussion the potential
complexities behind developments which people tend to imply are malicious.

------
sodafountan
Look, I get the point, if I were advertising on Facebook I'd be peeved too.
But look at it this way, the Facebook news-feed is one of the most valuable
assets on the internet, its a personal look into one's life, it's viewed by
millions of individuals multiple times over the course of a day. If Facebook
just throws ads from all of the things that you've liked over the years into
that stream then there'd be less activity in general because the user's
wouldn't be seeing what they came for, there friends, less activity hurts
everyone invested in Facebook. Less activity wouldn't happen though, I think
you would see a lot of people unlike things that they're tired of looking at,
and then you'd be in an even worse position. I think the Facebook promote
makes perfect sense.

------
ltcoleman
I do not currently have a fan page on Facebook, but if I did, I would have
assumed that people who liked my page would receive my posts in their news
feed. It seems odd to me that Facebook is allowing you to build a fan base
while promoting their product but then charging you to reach them. Sure, I
could go to their fan page but as a Facebook user, I like them so that I do
not have to go to that fan page.

For example, if my Crossfit box posts a new WOD everyday, I would greatly
prefer to have that in my news feed rather than having to go search out the
fan page again. I could have just gone to their actual web site.

It would be very nice if you could use the search box to search on your news
feed posts. If I could quickly do a search for the Crossfit box and get to the
daily post.... awesomesauce!

------
conradfr
I have the opposite problem. Bands etc that I "page-like" and who post too
much take over my newsfeed and I only have the option to hide everything or
view everything (if FB wants).

IIRC there was previously a "see only important messages from this person"
choice and it was better.

------
unreal37
(A very confusing set of comments to follow on this post, because everyone
seems to have their own opinion. 144 comments, 144 different opinions.)

I will say, if your posts show up so frequently in my stream, I will unlike
your page. Facebook is definitely saving you from a lot of unlikes. Facebook
is not Twitter - it's baby pictures from your friends.

I trust Facebook to control what to display to me MORE than I trust
advertisers to post only things I would be interested in. That they can pay
money ($200?) to get it there, that filters it too. They'll only pay for
interesting stuff presumably. So thank the Lord Facebook pages don't get to
control my stream directly.

------
crucialfelix
Another factor to include is that as time goes on everybody adds more friends
and more likes so the available consumable stream space is divided among more
posts. So this also contributes significantly to lessening the number of
people who see your posts.

But who knows what special sauce is in FB algos. If I were them I would
certainly distinguish between companies, news/blogging, musician/art and image
macro posters. Those all have very different usages and annoyance levels.

Probably the interaction rate is factored in, but that also gets spread
thinner and thinner. Obviously God and George Takei are winning the game, so
the game isn't unwinnable.

------
ekianjo
What's the outrage for ? Facebook has never said they would never change the
rules of the game. You benefit from their platform, they own it. If you are
not happy with it, you should not put all your eggs in one place and have
backup plans (twitter, google plus, and others) to reach your audience so that
competition works properly.

Facebook is a company, it's not a democracy asking their users what they
should do. They can destroy their business if the want to, and your
responsibility as a customer is go and look somewhere else to signify that
their new rules do not work for you anymore.

------
waltermorgan
Facebook is screwing page owners and real fans of the page over - and it's
been going on for years. Like used to be "Become a Fan". And a page owner used
to be able "Send updates" to fans. There are lots of us who had tens of
thousands of fans, who actually were fans. But "Fan" became "Like" and "Send
updates" disappeared, and slowly posts that were shown to most of your fans
were now showed to almost none. Through all these changes and monetization
products Facebook has diluted it all to the point it's become useless.

Reasonable? No way.

------
brokentone
Facebook has put themselves in an ideal situation. We're at the point in
social media marketing that businesses can't survive without one, in fact they
spend a lot of advertising money and placement in advertising their presence
on Facebook, which is primarily an advertisement for Facebook. Every new
connection, time on site, or new user to like your page is a huge win for
them.

Do we as business and individuals really want to pay to promote our content
AND be sold to advertisers AND build their network at the same time?

~~~
majormajor
You really think we're at that point? I'd be hard pressed to name a single
thing I've bought that I discovered from a Facebook marketing effort. I'm
currently drawing a blank, off the top of my head. I find local restaurants by
walking/driving around or searching Google. I find out about products and the
like from TV ads or just seeing them in stores.

I've got friend who "like" companies on Facebook to get discounts and such,
but when I've talked to them that's been pretty much the full extent of the
interaction—basically a new-style email list that gives them occasional
discounts. But is that essential to the survival of most businesses? I'm on FB
to connect with my friends, I simply would never even consider "liking" 90% of
the companies/products I buy. I don't need constant updates from the company
that makes my tires, or my jacket, or the vast majority of mundane stuff that
makes up the world.

The first company that comes to mind when I think of recently successful
marketing is Apple, and do they use social media marketing at all? They seem
very old school, with traditional TV spots and billboards that show you the
product and what you'd use it for.

------
wavesounds
I think the problem here is assuming what the purpose of the 'like' button is.
It's not a 'follow' or 'sign up for mailing list' or even 'add friend' button.
I think the meaning of this button will have to be defined by users, the
company and page owners over time, if one stake-holder has too great a voice
then the button will fail, for this action to be useful all parties involved
will need to gain from it and that means some compromise will be needed as
well until the correct balance is reached.

------
brianlovin
Um...am I the only one that would chalk this up to usage? Obviously not 100%
of your fans are going to see your posts because 100% of people don't use
Facebook every day, not to mention within the 2-3 hours your post would even
be seen in their news feed. For the people that log in a day or two later,
they most likely won't be scrolling through pages upon pages of updates in
order to see yours.

This isn't Facebook scamming you - it's simply that 100% of your fans don't
check 100% of your posts 100% of the time.

------
jakejake
I don't think that posts ever reached 100% of your friends or fans. I can't
find the article but I remember something like 40% was the amount of friends
who see any given post. I don't really mind it but it would be nice to have a
little better understanding of the logic behind it.

A few years ago Facebook had a feature where you could weight your friends'
from 1-10 and that would affect your feed. Now you can just limit by "only
important updates" and such. It's not really clear what that even means.

------
dcminter
Anecdatapoint: I've seen a handful of people post this link on Facebook. All
of them are promoting something. So far I've seen no other users post it.

FB's job is to keep the average user (who won't put much effort into
sanitizing their wall whatever they clicked on in the past) happy while
getting enough money out of their userbase as a whole to stay in business and
keep the stockholders happy. It's not their job to keep the promotors who use
FB as a tool happy.

------
bishnu
Stream ranking is one of the biggest drivers for engagement on social
networks. Period. Yes there is a small percentage of power users who are upset
their streams aren't exhaustive but most users barely even scroll down when
they load up FB, so it's imperative that important items appear at the top.

The story here is now that Facebook is willing to be paid by brands to degrade
the news feed experience for their users :)

------
edgesrazor
My major annoyance is that I'm not seeing the majority of Pages I Liked posts,
but yet I see every individual friends' "Likes and Comments". I really don't
want to see that my friend Liked a picture of a dead baby that 100,000 other
idiots Liked because the text told them if they don't another kid will die.

Best part is, the only way to change this is to shut it off for each
individual friend - not exactly convenient.

------
obiefernandez
Facebook already touts the benefits of paid media over "organic audience" for
marketers, so I fail to see how this is a huge difference from what they've
been doing. For example, see the case study information presented at
[http://allfacebook.com/understanding-paid-and-earned-
reach-o...](http://allfacebook.com/understanding-paid-and-earned-reach-on-
facebook_b102952)

------
bherms
Facebook doesn't owe you anything. It's a free service you use and they have
any and all rights to change their model at any time. Stop whining.

------
magoon
What's the big deal?

$75 for a 17-30K user reach is $0.0044 per user or less.

I actually think that's a good deal if you're announcing a new product or
important product update.

------
k2xl
I knew it was the end of facebook as soon as edgerank launched. just because i
don't go to someone's profile doesn't mean i'm not interested in their posts.
same with fan pages. it should have just stayed showing all posts from friends
- then naturally people would start to unfriend those they don't want to see
posts from.

------
kevinpet
I'm not sure what the internal thinking at Facebook is, but I suspect the
hierarchy is something like:

1\. Advertisers 2\. Real users 3\. Social media marketing scum

If they think most users would prefer not to see 10 posts per day after
accidentally clicking a like button, then they're probably going to do that.

------
bjhoops1
Pssst. Hey. Let's all move to Google Plus and NOT tell our crazy aunts and
grandparents.

------
angersock
tldr: Facebook suddenly decides to monetize further the folks who outsourced
their consumer relations.

Can't really do anything here other than sigh and shake head.

------
suyash
Also there is no option to see "Photos" anymore like it used to be, I'm almost
at the verge of abandoning Facebook!

------
psychotik
If you want to know what your friends are up to, call them... maybe?

~~~
petitmiam
The 'friends' referred to in the article are the 53,000 facebook users who
have 'liked' the Dangerous Minds blog on Facebook. The article also mentions
the blog posts 10 - 16 times a day.

------
antidoh
Tell me again what's wrong with RSS for update notification?

------
marcuspovey
Dead link.

------
smiddereens
So shoot them an email.

~~~
waltermorgan
What's their address?

------
bravoyankee
If you're posting 10-16 times a day on Facebook, you probably don't have any
friends. That's waaay too much.

