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> People tend to not want to follow companies Also many companies got burned thinking the smorgasbord of free traffic on social platforms would never end. It

> People tend to not want to follow companies Also many companies got burned thinking the smorgasbord of free traffic on social platforms would never end. It turns out that when your primary business model is selling traffic (via ads), giving it away for free is antithetical to your margins. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok (sometime soon) started off giving creators (and businesses) tons of free traffic only to eventually suppress it to push people towards paying to reach the followers they worked so hard to get. On the other hand, once someone has given you permission to email them then it really doesn’t matter if you do it from your own mailserver, mailchimp, or anything else… They are still expecting you to be in their inbox (hopefully delivering great value). Source: I was reading the internal newsletter in the bathroom of a major social network's office ~6 years ago when they were announcing (in celebration) that they had suppressed organic reach to sub 5%

bdlowery 4y ago
Following a giant company on social media is pointless. A large majority of their posts are dumb memes, or clever ways to be funny. It’s never anything of substance.
- MrDunham 4y ago
  I wonder if that's (algorithmic) selection bias? IE you only see dumb memes or clever ways to be funny because they are the only thing that garner enough likes to break through the newsfeed noise? Or if companies just found out that their interesting-but-not-high-valence posts end up not going anywhere... so they create dumb memes or clever ways to be funny. Either way though we're caught in a death spiral of algorithmic selection and self-selection leaving us with drivel - making us less likely to follow companies and companies increasingly less willing to invest in quality content or content creators. Then round and round it goes.

bdlowery 4y ago

Following a giant company on social media is pointless. A large majority of their posts are dumb memes, or clever ways to be funny. It’s never anything of substance.

MrDunham 4y ago
I wonder if that's (algorithmic) selection bias? IE you only see dumb memes or clever ways to be funny because they are the only thing that garner enough likes to break through the newsfeed noise? Or if companies just found out that their interesting-but-not-high-valence posts end up not going anywhere... so they create dumb memes or clever ways to be funny. Either way though we're caught in a death spiral of algorithmic selection and self-selection leaving us with drivel - making us less likely to follow companies and companies increasingly less willing to invest in quality content or content creators. Then round and round it goes.