3 ms·

I was saving up this idea, but here's how you could disrupt Facebook. This is already happening, but it could be automated. In short, automatically DELAY posti

I was saving up this idea, but here's how you could disrupt Facebook. This is already happening, but it could be automated. In short, automatically DELAY posting to Facebook. Let everybody know at the bottom of all content: This was published first at example.com and released to social media (Facebook) after X hours. Make Facebook look antiquated like a newspaper. Let everyone know, Facebook is the old news. If you want our latest news, you have to sign up for the email list--you must to go to example.com for the LATEST news. One way I'm thinking this could work with a WordPress plugin, when the publisher schedules a post, the post would be "locked" from view with a countdown timer. "This content unlocks in 6 hours. To unlock this content now, and to get our content before everyone else, sign up for our email list." Maybe for really time-sensitive info you could have three tiers. A paid tier (instant release) and a free tier (unlocked 1 hour later) and a social media tier (unlocked 6 hours later.) Essentially, you're taking advantage of the value of time, automatically. For example, if shampoo is on sale and you're 1 hour late, maybe the shelf is cleared out. But you don't necessarily need a paid tier, because the publisher is a) getting more traffic to example.com, pulling traffic off Facebook and b) getting more email subscribers. Publishers do implement this on their own, but I think it would work well as a WordPress plugin or as some kind of paid service if it was slick enough.

garduque 11y ago
I don't know anybody who gets "really time-sensitive" info from Facebook. I can't even think of an example beyond your not terribly good example of a shampoo sale.
- pjbrunet 11y ago
  In general, if publishers are automatically sharing to Facebook without some kind of delay, people will just stay on Facebook. Also consider the private groups on Facebook, they could be sharing paid subscriptions and who would know? The idea isn't just about Facebook, but publishing anything to get more subscribers. If your posts are time-sensitive and people can get your info through social media (without delay) then you're probably losing traffic, because people are busy, lazy, whatever--they're often already on Facebook and need a reason to go somewhere else. Paid subscriptions aren't as common, and I almost deleted that part of my comment, but people do pay for time-sensitive info. As far as the "paid tier" I was thinking out loud, in terms of building a general purpose SAS app for publishers. I haven't nailed down exactly how it would work, to delay posts to social media. Obviously it would need compelling case studies where people increased traffic and subscribers, and revenue. I can think of a couple of markets to start with, but not getting more specific than that. Another aspect of this is the notifications. I think email notifications are good to start with because they show up on your phone, and if those notifications are customizable and targeted, that's convenient. But I think there's more you could do with notifications, so that people aren't annoyed that they have to go to your website to find the (timely) information they want. If you can do better notifications than social media (more specific, less annoying) then I think people will more likely go to your website vs. consume your content through social media which sends less-useful notifications.

garduque 11y ago

I don't know anybody who gets "really time-sensitive" info from Facebook. I can't even think of an example beyond your not terribly good example of a shampoo sale.

pjbrunet 11y ago
In general, if publishers are automatically sharing to Facebook without some kind of delay, people will just stay on Facebook. Also consider the private groups on Facebook, they could be sharing paid subscriptions and who would know? The idea isn't just about Facebook, but publishing anything to get more subscribers. If your posts are time-sensitive and people can get your info through social media (without delay) then you're probably losing traffic, because people are busy, lazy, whatever--they're often already on Facebook and need a reason to go somewhere else. Paid subscriptions aren't as common, and I almost deleted that part of my comment, but people do pay for time-sensitive info. As far as the "paid tier" I was thinking out loud, in terms of building a general purpose SAS app for publishers. I haven't nailed down exactly how it would work, to delay posts to social media. Obviously it would need compelling case studies where people increased traffic and subscribers, and revenue. I can think of a couple of markets to start with, but not getting more specific than that. Another aspect of this is the notifications. I think email notifications are good to start with because they show up on your phone, and if those notifications are customizable and targeted, that's convenient. But I think there's more you could do with notifications, so that people aren't annoyed that they have to go to your website to find the (timely) information they want. If you can do better notifications than social media (more specific, less annoying) then I think people will more likely go to your website vs. consume your content through social media which sends less-useful notifications.