5 ms·

He didn’t articulate it well but the issue is the lack of organic reach given to page posts these days. Facebook has decided that fan page owners should pay to

He didn’t articulate it well but the issue is the lack of organic reach given to page posts these days. Facebook has decided that fan page owners should pay to access their own fans - which negates the entire point of having a page or fans in the first place. The issue for Facebook is that as more and more publishers leave because they are getting no organic traffic, people will spend less time there. So this whole money grab may eventually backfire on them. If all publishers leave and only the social functions are left, is Facebook as attractive anymore? This is of course anecdotal, but many of my friends have not posted on there in years, and the ones that have average a post or update maybe every few months. That’s hardly worth sticking around for unless other interesting things remain in the ecosystem. I’d say that while people are jumping ship, 2018-2019 might be the first time that it is at least within the realm of possibility that someone could start a viable Facebook competitor. Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.

msabalau 9y ago
And of the remaining friends, some subtract value by the nature of their "engaged" content.
- snowwrestler 9y ago
  Right. As a lot of social functions among close friends have moved to Instagram, Snapchat, or just group chats in messaging apps, what's left on Facebook? Your racist uncle, and high school friends you never talk to anymore.
detaro 9y ago
On the other hand, it could be that the social functions declined due to an overemphasis of news, companies, ... which people seem to feel increasingly unhappy about and might bounce back if they actually become visible on the site again. (Total speculation of course as well)
fwdpropaganda 9y ago
This is one of the reason why e-mail is still relevant in marketing: no gatekeepers asking you to pay for access to your audience.
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  Modulo that the email marketing companies (such as MailChimp) that most successfully navigate the harsh waters of spam folder avoidance with the major email providers, enough that you can mostly assume your audience receives the marketing emails, are themselves approaching something of a monopsony and are in the process of becoming gatekeepers asking you to pay for access to your audience.
  - fwdpropaganda 9y ago
    You absolutely have a point, but the dynamics are different. Multiple such companies compete to be your e-mail sender. No one is competing with Facebook to receive money from companies who believed they could reach their audiences inside Facebook.
    - WorldMaker 9y ago
      Sorry, didn't intend to derail here with whataboutism, was thinking about unrelated problems to the ones at hand in this article. There are too many hard problems to deal with right now, and we can't fight them all at once, presumably. Anyway, you are right, walled gardens are always going to be harder to fix than the network dynamics of what should be a more open and decentralized system than is maybe presently the case in practice.

msabalau 9y ago

And of the remaining friends, some subtract value by the nature of their "engaged" content.

snowwrestler 9y ago
Right. As a lot of social functions among close friends have moved to Instagram, Snapchat, or just group chats in messaging apps, what's left on Facebook? Your racist uncle, and high school friends you never talk to anymore.

detaro 9y ago

On the other hand, it could be that the social functions declined due to an overemphasis of news, companies, ... which people seem to feel increasingly unhappy about and might bounce back if they actually become visible on the site again. (Total speculation of course as well)

fwdpropaganda 9y ago

This is one of the reason why e-mail is still relevant in marketing: no gatekeepers asking you to pay for access to your audience.

WorldMaker 9y ago
Modulo that the email marketing companies (such as MailChimp) that most successfully navigate the harsh waters of spam folder avoidance with the major email providers, enough that you can mostly assume your audience receives the marketing emails, are themselves approaching something of a monopsony and are in the process of becoming gatekeepers asking you to pay for access to your audience.
- fwdpropaganda 9y ago
  You absolutely have a point, but the dynamics are different. Multiple such companies compete to be your e-mail sender. No one is competing with Facebook to receive money from companies who believed they could reach their audiences inside Facebook.
  - WorldMaker 9y ago
    Sorry, didn't intend to derail here with whataboutism, was thinking about unrelated problems to the ones at hand in this article. There are too many hard problems to deal with right now, and we can't fight them all at once, presumably. Anyway, you are right, walled gardens are always going to be harder to fix than the network dynamics of what should be a more open and decentralized system than is maybe presently the case in practice.