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A Breakup Letter to Facebook from Eat24

107 points by brunooo 13y ago

Jedd 13y ago
Here's my hit prediction - in 1-2 years HN will be full of blog posts of people bemoaning how they are forced to abandon Twitter, not because they have just noticed that 140char is too short to convey a meaningful message, but because they feel that they've been betrayed and/or misled. (It will take longer because they charge substantially less, but it will happen because they charge substantially less.)
happywolf 13y ago
FB has huge financial pressure to monetize everything. The consequence is to-your-face ads that we are seeing day-in-day-out.
antr 13y ago
Every day that goes by I am more convinced that the Twitter stream is the best way to communicate, as a brand and as a consumer. On Twitter, as in Facebook, I follow/like whatever brands I find interesting, engaging and resonate with my believes/interests. If I see that a brand does/say something I don't like, I simply unfollow/unlike. What Facebook is doing is (over)engineering how my relationship with brands/people are, and I don't like that. If I like Robert Scoble on Facebook it is because I want to see what he has to say, and my like should not just be another stat on on Scoble's total number of followers. Hence, my use of Twitter is significantly higher than that on FB. Facebook is digging itself into a big hole.
- TillE 13y ago
  Twitter could really use extra (optional) tools for managing different relationships, but I definitely agree that trying to algorithmically filter what I see is ultimately the wrong way to go with anything that resembles current social networks. Keep it simple, and use your clever algorithms to present me with concrete choices, rather than simply enforcing them with no input.
- maxerickson 13y ago
  Why do you want to engage with brands? I don't mean that to be antagonistic, I just don't have much understanding of that particular thing.
  - antr 13y ago
    why? because I want to hear what they have to say, and by "engage" I don't mean to reply/contact them, but simply consumer their content with the occasional ping: i. News, I want to stay up to date: I like to follow Reuters, Associated Press, Financial Times, Pando, Recode ii. General interest: The Economist, National Geographic, Science Magazine, various Universities iii. Companies I use their products/services or find interesting and what to get their updates: IBM, Dropbox, Disney, TED, Formula 1 teams, Raspberry Pi, a bunch of airlines, hotel chains, etc
  - impendia 13y ago
    I've been very surprised to notice this myself. But it really is true. Companies like Best Buy, Applebee's, Hilton each have over a million likes. Even much-maligned United Airlines has nearly 700,000.
  - joelrunyon 13y ago
    Some brands are fun or interesting. Some I'm willingly give money to. Not all brands are faceless corporations.
  - michaelt 13y ago
    Why do you want to engage with brands? It depends on the brand and the type of engagement on offer, obviously. If a band I like announces a tour, or an arts organization I like announces a new program of performances, or a software product I use daily announces a new feature or release, I'm interested to get an e-mail (in low volumes and strictly opt-in of course).
  - JohnTHaller 13y ago
    You follow a band you like because you want to know about their upcoming performances and new music. You follow an artist you like to see new stuff they're working on and when they post it online. You follow your favorite family owned restaurant to see what specials they have and when they're doing a wine tasting. You follow your favorite local bar to find out when trivia night is. There are a ton of reasons to follow things that aren't friends. And Facebook was a great way to track all that stuff. Now, it isn't, because Facebook changed the algorithm. You can still find it if you manually click on the Pages Feed, which is handy for folks who know it's there. But most people don't, so most of what you take the time to post on Facebook as a business is barely seen by anyone.
- hnnewguy 13y ago
  >Every day that goes by I am more convinced that the Twitter stream is the best way to communicate, as a brand and as a consumer As an avid Twitter consumer without a Facebook account, I agree with you...for now. But until Twitter actually makes enough money to support itself, let's not get too far ahead with the "they're doing it right!" argument. I see no way that they don't eventually end up in the same boat as Facebook, forcing promoters to compete for limited space.
- prostoalex 13y ago
  If you bookmark https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr for your starter page, the News Feed will go into "Recent Stories" mode, featuring everybody in reverse chronological order, equivalent of Twitter's feed.
  - antr 13y ago
    great tip – many thanks
randomflavor 13y ago
Silly post. Facebook is a business. Just like in Costco, you don't get free samples forever. At some point you need to buy the bagel bites to get full at home.
- peteretep 13y ago
  The point you are missing: this business considers itself to be a content creator and value adder, and they do that because Facebook has previously encouraged that. Now Facebook are saying that they don't care how compelling your content is, if you are commercial in any way, you have to pay. That's not how a social network is meant to work.
  - WoodenChair 13y ago
    Who exactly defines "how a social network is meant to work?" Seeing as Facebook is one of the two most defining social networks of the social network era I think they at least have a say.
    - grey-area 13y ago
      Who exactly defines "how a social network is meant to work?" The users do. Facebook will see declining participation if they keep taking user-hostile actions like this. People need to feel they are in charge of their feed (at least mostly in charge), but if they no longer control who sees their content, or which content they see, and hence become unhappy using the service or use it less, that's going to be a big problem for FB.
- dasil003 13y ago
  There's a reason that Twitter and Google label things as sponsored ads. It's because when you are providing a service, there is a direct conflict of interest between your user experience and your ad sales. If you don't draw a line between advertising and organic content, then you severely risk degrading the content your user receives, and it doesn't matter whether you think you are or not (clearly Facebook thinks it can toe this line), but as soon as users perceive that the content they are receiving is more payola than popular then you've killed the golden goose.
joelrunyon 13y ago
I don't use Eat24 - but between this and their post on NSFW advertising - I feel like I should. Their content strategy people know what's up.
- joelrunyon 13y ago
  Here's the other article I was referencing: http://blog.eat24hours.com/how-to-advertise-on-a-porn-website/ http://blog.eat24hours.com/how-to-advertise-on-a-porn-websit...
- zacinbusiness 13y ago
  I've never heard of this brand before today. And thus I'd never seen this post before you posted it here. Now, my mission is to move to a city that is served by Eat24 and to give them my money. These guys are very smart - they had a problem (we need to increase ad revenue and ROI), they found an inventive solution (advertise on porn sites, the demographics add up and there's NO competition), and they executed a great plan by engaging with the sites and the porn stars themselves. Very smart indeed!
MicroBerto 13y ago
Sounds like they're cutting off their nose to spite their face. Why not just go with the 100% free route and accept less engagement on their posts? They will still profit. People will still come to Facebook and search for them. I'm no fan of Facebook either, but this just seems childish. In the end, it's not Facebook who's hurt. It's them and their FB-only fans.
- JohnTHaller 13y ago
  Because engagement with the people who like your page is purposely being dropped to 1-2%. So, those 10,000 likes you have won't really matter because only 100 or 200 people will see it. Unless you pay $20 to get all 10,000 to see it and get you another couple dozen likes.
  - 300bps 13y ago
    You're right, but you didn't point out the other obvious thing that some people aren't getting: it takes effort to properly post things on Facebook. Add that to only 1-2% of your hard-won subscribers are actually seeing it and it makes it really not worth it.
    - MicroBerto 13y ago
      Has anyone really looked at their Facebook page? Their engagement is low for a good reason - they simply aren't good at posting on Facebook. Go look at their page and tell me: if you were in charge of Facebook's algorithm, would you put that stuff on every person's feed without charging a bunch of money??? I'm by no means an expert, but I know that their posts aren't exactly making me interested in ordering food or talking to them. They do, however, have some posts that went viral, but they're really not suited towards their customer base. It's just not a good feed. IMHO, and obviously also in Facebook's, they don't "deserve" any more attention when there are tons of more successful alternatives for Facebook to show.
      - JohnTHaller 13y ago
drawkbox 13y ago
While I agree with the problem with paid ads and bots, it is funny that the blog uses like buttons and has facebook comments though they are leaving facebook.
- joelrunyon 13y ago
  Yeah - interesting to see what they'll do about fb comments.
leephillips 13y ago
I just don't understand why a company would want a Facebook page; consequently all this angst and drama leaves me befuddled. They have a website. They can show people who care pictures of food and whatever else they want. Why would they seek to dilute their web presence and message by helping another company profit from their content?
- kanamekun 13y ago
  Facebook is like any other marketing channel: it can drive a great deal of sales and brand awareness, if you know how to manage the channel well. Facebook is taxing their channel more in order to capture more of this value for themselves, but there's still value left over for companies to generate and capture for themselves.
- watwut 13y ago
  Because if people "like" their page on facebook, company updates will show up in those people news feed. People are likely to check their facebook feeds and unlikely to check your company website. Whether the company wants to build community, let customers know something (plumbing broken we are closed today) or simply show ads, facebook is a way to push it on customers. Website is not. Most companies do not worry about "diluting" their web presence, they want to be shown as much as possible on as much as possible places.
- mark_l_watson 13y ago
  I mostly agree with you. That said, FB can be used to drive traffic to their site. A little off topic, but: I am just an individual consultant and I write some books. I find FB and G+ to be effective for letting people know when I have a new blog article, open source project, or new book available. But you are absolutely correct: we should own and develop our own web properties.
- krisoft 13y ago
  I have asked the same question from a marketing professional. His answers was: We go fishing where the fish is. The sad truth is, it's hard to get eyeballs on your site. Once that changes the game will change.
_superposition_ 13y ago
And I can't even post a comment on their blog to show support because I closed my fb account. Oh the irony... Anyway, more power to ya.
- nb4hnp 13y ago
  I'm in the same boat here. It's almost (almost... but not quite) worth reactivating just to show support. I'm sure the publicity from this stunt will be plenty without my input. This post and the one about how they advertised on a porn site (http://blog.eat24hours.com/how-to-advertise-on-a-porn-website/ http://blog.eat24hours.com/how-to-advertise-on-a-porn-websit...) had me laughing so loud I woke up my roommate.
tjshipe 13y ago
They are deleting their Facebook on 11:59 PM on Monday. That is a minute before April 1st. I suspect a clever April Fools self-promotion tactic...
protomyth 13y ago
I have a question on this. Let's say small college puts a post on Facebook like an event, financial aid warning, or a school close announcement. If I read this right, then that post will not be distributed to everyone following the college? In contrast, on Twitter, a post will go to all followers. Is this right?
- techaddict009 13y ago
  Yes it 100 Percent right. It will reach to approx 10% of people who have liked the fan page.
  - sergiotapia 13y ago
    Wow, I just learned about this today. What's the point of having a Facebook page then? Sounds like a gigantic waste of time.
    - wingerlang 13y ago
      I think that the more people who 'interact' with the post the more it will spread to other who also like the page.
    - frostmatthew 13y ago
      Well you can pay to promote a post so it will have a higher reach. Businesses should be more appreciative of the fact that 5-10% reach for free is far more free reach than you will get with TV, radio, Google ads, or anything else short of putting flyers on telephone poles.
      - sergiotapia 13y ago
        Well, no. I disagree with what you're saying. If I create a page for my business and share coupons and stuff, people are free to come like my page. That means they want to see more of my stuff voluntarily. Why is Facebook extorting money from the business to allow users to see what they want to see?
nickgrosvenor 13y ago
This is why Facebook is buying other companies because people are migrating away from Facebook. One flaw Facebook has, when everyone's been on it for years they collect hundreds of friends from random old parts of their life. This waters down the experience because random people you barely know posting all the time turns your feed into something less interesting. Toss in more ads combined with old acquaintances, and distant family members and you have a spammy feed. Plus advertisers are mad because they invested in broadening their reach only to have it taken away from them unless they pay to promote. A new social network is a fresh social network, void of your parent's family friends and clothing companies you no longer care about. Facebook is myspace all over again. The most telling decline stat, my older sister who is a soccer mom and was obsessed with Facebook for years recently told me, "we don't really go on Facebook anymore, we use instagram." uh-oh, it's the non-technical family member indicator. She was the last one of us to get a smartphone too. That's why Facebook is buying other internet properties. Because their's is on the decline with actual engaged users, their stats might show new users joining quickly, those are probably bots, spammers, and foreigners. Facebook's future is a universal login tool and a place to see you're great aunt's inspiration quote spam.
- evgen 13y ago
  You realize that at the same time as the occulus rift purchase they announced one billion mobile users, right? No one is moving away from facebook. Everyone has anecdotes but the financial filings have real numbers. They may not be growing at the rates they were in the past, but that was inevitable.
morgante 13y ago
Honestly I still don't get the hubbub over this algorithm change by Facebook. It's a scaling issue Facebook is attempting to solve, in a dramatically different (and IMHO superior) way than Twitter. On both networks, every time you look at your feed you'll only look at the top X items. On Twitter, that'll just be the X most recent items. On Facebook, those X items are picked algorithmically based on the degree of engagement. The latter seems 1000x better and more intelligent than Twitter, even though it technically means not every post I'm subscribed to will make it into my feed. As people spend more and more years on Facebook, we naturally accumulate more friends and pages (personally around 1200 friends and 200 pages). Thus, we're subscribed to more content. Far too much to reasonably make it into our feed. Given that X is fixed, the percentage of any particular source's posts which will make it into X should decline. It seems totally reasonable that which posts make it in are dictated by how much engagement those posts had.
- sparkzilla 13y ago
  No. Just no. Like many other small businesses, I paid thousands of dollars to Facebook for ads to create fan pages. People who were interested in what I was doing became fans (I had about 4000 in all). There was never any indication from Facebook that they would make it increasingly difficult to reach those people, and those fans were never told that they would not see my posts. Due to changes in their algorithm I watched the views for my posts drop from 1200 to less than 10. Then I was told I had to pay to reach my own fans. Businesses like ours helped grow Facebook by building fan pages but Facebook betrayed us and, more importantly, betrayed our fans. It's sick.
  - morgante 13y ago
    Instead of resorting to emotion, can you explain a compelling alternative for how Facebook could actually solve this? Yes, you have 4000 fans. But I'm 99% sure you're not the only page they like. They probably like many other pages, and also have many other friends (2 numbers that increase over time). Do you not see how it's literally impossible for every post I'm subscribed to reach me? This is purely a problem of scale. Most of my friends don't see my updates, because they also have many other friends. But my mom sees every single update I have because I'm her only Facebook friend. Perhaps it's annoying/confusing that Facebook gave you the option to monetarily combat the effects of a growing network. But organic growth also still works.
logn 13y ago
Well that's funny brands are complaining Facebook is selling out. That's like Coca-Cola complaining that the Super Bowl is too commercial. When I joined The Facebook it was for me and my college classmates. There was no such thing as liking a brand (and maybe not even liking at all). I remember most of my friends being surprised when after liking a brand you were inundated with spam. I guess after people obsessively liked things for years, and added every possible friend, the only thing left is to pay for news feed placement.
star0zero 13y ago
My sincere apologies for the sarcasm, but you mean to tell me that your previously free source of massive one click fan reach is no longer free?! There is no possible way that this was intentional ...
j2kun 13y ago
The algorithm they describe is apparently called "EdgeRank." All I can find via Google are really bad infographics and worse layman explanations (ones that make it clear the writer doesn't understand basic graph theory, or is adulterating their understanding for whatever reason). Can anyone post a link to a research-level paper explaining the algorithm? The name EdgeRank makes me think it's a ripoff of PageRank, so are they solving some sort of eigensystem for, what, an incidence matrix instead of an adjacency matrix?
- j2kun 13y ago
  Ah. It appears to be nothing more complicated than computing this linear formula given, and Facebook has a thousand tiny little knobs for adjusting the parameters. Maybe the problem is that their algorithm is not really an algorithm. PageRank was good because it had an interpretation as a random walk that made sense (before SEO). EdgeRank can only be interpreted as an arbitrary formula.
jsonne 13y ago
I actually kind of feel for facebook. Not even a year ago people were complaining about Facebook not having enough relevant content etc. So they were migrating away. Old facebook was filled with commercial spam and made it a crappy experience. EdgeRank helped with that aspect a lot. Switching hats, this also bothers me though. I'm a marketer for a lot of local businesses through my agency, and obviously this sucks. It's still a really valuable platform from a paid perspective. In fact using the some images and copy on facebook versus Reddit I get almost 5x the CTR and conversions. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you're savvy and you're willing to treat Facebook like any other ad network there's still a lot of value to be had. The days of free engagement from pages seems to be coming to an end. That really sucks for people who paid to build their's up. Going back on features like that and screwing people etc. seems to be an endemic of the tech industry as a whole though and not just Facebook. Google Reader anyone? I know this is more of a rant and points out more problems than solutions, but I just wanted to point out the situation is more complex than Facebook is bad let's hate them.
- robot_head 13y ago
  Nobody paid Google any money to create a following on Google Reader, and then made that following worthless... Not really a fair comparison.
  - jsonne 13y ago
    Okay then not google reader. What about the myriad of startups that "pivot" leaving paying customers hanging etc. Frankly too, that was a very small part of my overall point.
estebanrules 13y ago
yawn Another "breakup letter"...fascinating...
froo 13y ago
I don't know what the original author is talking about to be honest. When I use Facebook, my feed is filled with friends & family posts and the very occasional ad. To really put it into perspective, I just opened my Facebook now, first ad is in position 5 in my feed. The next ad popped in at the 52nd item in my feed. I went looking for a third ad.. I decided to stop after the 200th item in my feed and I generally don't scroll down that far in a single sitting. Sure, there are ads on the side, but I'm more or less blind to those ads because they're always there. That's not to say it was always like this. Candy Crush ads and whatnot used to pop up all the time from certain people. That's why you can hide those. They quickly disappear. I guess it must just be cool to dump on Facebook now.
- Irishsteve 13y ago
  We must be in different buckets. I signing and I see 1 message from a friend followed by 1 ad, 2 sponsored posts and to the right 4 or 5 ad's in the sidebar.
SnakeDoc 13y ago
I 100% support eat24 in their decision. Facebook is ridiculous now. I requested my "facebook archive" 2 days ago and still have not received my email confirmation with the download link. As soon as I do, I'm deleting my facebook profile as well. Goodbye Facebook. I hoped you would learn from mistakes, but I see you haven't.

107 points by brunooo 13y ago

Jedd 13y ago

Here's my hit prediction - in 1-2 years HN will be full of blog posts of people bemoaning how they are forced to abandon Twitter, not because they have just noticed that 140char is too short to convey a meaningful message, but because they feel that they've been betrayed and/or misled. (It will take longer because they charge substantially less, but it will happen because they charge substantially less.)

happywolf 13y ago

FB has huge financial pressure to monetize everything. The consequence is to-your-face ads that we are seeing day-in-day-out.

antr 13y ago

Every day that goes by I am more convinced that the Twitter stream is the best way to communicate, as a brand and as a consumer. On Twitter, as in Facebook, I follow/like whatever brands I find interesting, engaging and resonate with my believes/interests. If I see that a brand does/say something I don't like, I simply unfollow/unlike. What Facebook is doing is (over)engineering how my relationship with brands/people are, and I don't like that. If I like Robert Scoble on Facebook it is because I want to see what he has to say, and my like should not just be another stat on on Scoble's total number of followers. Hence, my use of Twitter is significantly higher than that on FB. Facebook is digging itself into a big hole.

TillE 13y ago
Twitter could really use extra (optional) tools for managing different relationships, but I definitely agree that trying to algorithmically filter what I see is ultimately the wrong way to go with anything that resembles current social networks. Keep it simple, and use your clever algorithms to present me with concrete choices, rather than simply enforcing them with no input.
maxerickson 13y ago
Why do you want to engage with brands? I don't mean that to be antagonistic, I just don't have much understanding of that particular thing.
- antr 13y ago
  why? because I want to hear what they have to say, and by "engage" I don't mean to reply/contact them, but simply consumer their content with the occasional ping: i. News, I want to stay up to date: I like to follow Reuters, Associated Press, Financial Times, Pando, Recode ii. General interest: The Economist, National Geographic, Science Magazine, various Universities iii. Companies I use their products/services or find interesting and what to get their updates: IBM, Dropbox, Disney, TED, Formula 1 teams, Raspberry Pi, a bunch of airlines, hotel chains, etc
- impendia 13y ago
  I've been very surprised to notice this myself. But it really is true. Companies like Best Buy, Applebee's, Hilton each have over a million likes. Even much-maligned United Airlines has nearly 700,000.
- joelrunyon 13y ago
  Some brands are fun or interesting. Some I'm willingly give money to. Not all brands are faceless corporations.
- michaelt 13y ago
  Why do you want to engage with brands? It depends on the brand and the type of engagement on offer, obviously. If a band I like announces a tour, or an arts organization I like announces a new program of performances, or a software product I use daily announces a new feature or release, I'm interested to get an e-mail (in low volumes and strictly opt-in of course).
- JohnTHaller 13y ago
  You follow a band you like because you want to know about their upcoming performances and new music. You follow an artist you like to see new stuff they're working on and when they post it online. You follow your favorite family owned restaurant to see what specials they have and when they're doing a wine tasting. You follow your favorite local bar to find out when trivia night is. There are a ton of reasons to follow things that aren't friends. And Facebook was a great way to track all that stuff. Now, it isn't, because Facebook changed the algorithm. You can still find it if you manually click on the Pages Feed, which is handy for folks who know it's there. But most people don't, so most of what you take the time to post on Facebook as a business is barely seen by anyone.
hnnewguy 13y ago
>Every day that goes by I am more convinced that the Twitter stream is the best way to communicate, as a brand and as a consumer As an avid Twitter consumer without a Facebook account, I agree with you...for now. But until Twitter actually makes enough money to support itself, let's not get too far ahead with the "they're doing it right!" argument. I see no way that they don't eventually end up in the same boat as Facebook, forcing promoters to compete for limited space.
prostoalex 13y ago
If you bookmark https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr for your starter page, the News Feed will go into "Recent Stories" mode, featuring everybody in reverse chronological order, equivalent of Twitter's feed.
- antr 13y ago
  great tip – many thanks

randomflavor 13y ago

Silly post. Facebook is a business. Just like in Costco, you don't get free samples forever. At some point you need to buy the bagel bites to get full at home.

peteretep 13y ago
The point you are missing: this business considers itself to be a content creator and value adder, and they do that because Facebook has previously encouraged that. Now Facebook are saying that they don't care how compelling your content is, if you are commercial in any way, you have to pay. That's not how a social network is meant to work.
- WoodenChair 13y ago
  Who exactly defines "how a social network is meant to work?" Seeing as Facebook is one of the two most defining social networks of the social network era I think they at least have a say.
  - grey-area 13y ago
    Who exactly defines "how a social network is meant to work?" The users do. Facebook will see declining participation if they keep taking user-hostile actions like this. People need to feel they are in charge of their feed (at least mostly in charge), but if they no longer control who sees their content, or which content they see, and hence become unhappy using the service or use it less, that's going to be a big problem for FB.
dasil003 13y ago
There's a reason that Twitter and Google label things as sponsored ads. It's because when you are providing a service, there is a direct conflict of interest between your user experience and your ad sales. If you don't draw a line between advertising and organic content, then you severely risk degrading the content your user receives, and it doesn't matter whether you think you are or not (clearly Facebook thinks it can toe this line), but as soon as users perceive that the content they are receiving is more payola than popular then you've killed the golden goose.

joelrunyon 13y ago

I don't use Eat24 - but between this and their post on NSFW advertising - I feel like I should. Their content strategy people know what's up.

joelrunyon 13y ago
Here's the other article I was referencing: http://blog.eat24hours.com/how-to-advertise-on-a-porn-website/ http://blog.eat24hours.com/how-to-advertise-on-a-porn-websit...
zacinbusiness 13y ago
I've never heard of this brand before today. And thus I'd never seen this post before you posted it here. Now, my mission is to move to a city that is served by Eat24 and to give them my money. These guys are very smart - they had a problem (we need to increase ad revenue and ROI), they found an inventive solution (advertise on porn sites, the demographics add up and there's NO competition), and they executed a great plan by engaging with the sites and the porn stars themselves. Very smart indeed!

MicroBerto 13y ago

Sounds like they're cutting off their nose to spite their face. Why not just go with the 100% free route and accept less engagement on their posts? They will still profit. People will still come to Facebook and search for them. I'm no fan of Facebook either, but this just seems childish. In the end, it's not Facebook who's hurt. It's them and their FB-only fans.

JohnTHaller 13y ago
Because engagement with the people who like your page is purposely being dropped to 1-2%. So, those 10,000 likes you have won't really matter because only 100 or 200 people will see it. Unless you pay $20 to get all 10,000 to see it and get you another couple dozen likes.
- 300bps 13y ago
  You're right, but you didn't point out the other obvious thing that some people aren't getting: it takes effort to properly post things on Facebook. Add that to only 1-2% of your hard-won subscribers are actually seeing it and it makes it really not worth it.
  - MicroBerto 13y ago
    Has anyone really looked at their Facebook page? Their engagement is low for a good reason - they simply aren't good at posting on Facebook. Go look at their page and tell me: if you were in charge of Facebook's algorithm, would you put that stuff on every person's feed without charging a bunch of money??? I'm by no means an expert, but I know that their posts aren't exactly making me interested in ordering food or talking to them. They do, however, have some posts that went viral, but they're really not suited towards their customer base. It's just not a good feed. IMHO, and obviously also in Facebook's, they don't "deserve" any more attention when there are tons of more successful alternatives for Facebook to show.
    - JohnTHaller 13y ago

drawkbox 13y ago

While I agree with the problem with paid ads and bots, it is funny that the blog uses like buttons and has facebook comments though they are leaving facebook.

joelrunyon 13y ago
Yeah - interesting to see what they'll do about fb comments.

leephillips 13y ago

I just don't understand why a company would want a Facebook page; consequently all this angst and drama leaves me befuddled. They have a website. They can show people who care pictures of food and whatever else they want. Why would they seek to dilute their web presence and message by helping another company profit from their content?

kanamekun 13y ago
Facebook is like any other marketing channel: it can drive a great deal of sales and brand awareness, if you know how to manage the channel well. Facebook is taxing their channel more in order to capture more of this value for themselves, but there's still value left over for companies to generate and capture for themselves.
watwut 13y ago
Because if people "like" their page on facebook, company updates will show up in those people news feed. People are likely to check their facebook feeds and unlikely to check your company website. Whether the company wants to build community, let customers know something (plumbing broken we are closed today) or simply show ads, facebook is a way to push it on customers. Website is not. Most companies do not worry about "diluting" their web presence, they want to be shown as much as possible on as much as possible places.
mark_l_watson 13y ago
I mostly agree with you. That said, FB can be used to drive traffic to their site. A little off topic, but: I am just an individual consultant and I write some books. I find FB and G+ to be effective for letting people know when I have a new blog article, open source project, or new book available. But you are absolutely correct: we should own and develop our own web properties.
krisoft 13y ago
I have asked the same question from a marketing professional. His answers was: We go fishing where the fish is. The sad truth is, it's hard to get eyeballs on your site. Once that changes the game will change.

_superposition_ 13y ago

And I can't even post a comment on their blog to show support because I closed my fb account. Oh the irony... Anyway, more power to ya.

nb4hnp 13y ago
I'm in the same boat here. It's almost (almost... but not quite) worth reactivating just to show support. I'm sure the publicity from this stunt will be plenty without my input. This post and the one about how they advertised on a porn site (http://blog.eat24hours.com/how-to-advertise-on-a-porn-website/ http://blog.eat24hours.com/how-to-advertise-on-a-porn-websit...) had me laughing so loud I woke up my roommate.

tjshipe 13y ago

They are deleting their Facebook on 11:59 PM on Monday. That is a minute before April 1st. I suspect a clever April Fools self-promotion tactic...

protomyth 13y ago

I have a question on this. Let's say small college puts a post on Facebook like an event, financial aid warning, or a school close announcement. If I read this right, then that post will not be distributed to everyone following the college? In contrast, on Twitter, a post will go to all followers. Is this right?

techaddict009 13y ago
Yes it 100 Percent right. It will reach to approx 10% of people who have liked the fan page.
- sergiotapia 13y ago
  Wow, I just learned about this today. What's the point of having a Facebook page then? Sounds like a gigantic waste of time.
  - wingerlang 13y ago
    I think that the more people who 'interact' with the post the more it will spread to other who also like the page.
  - frostmatthew 13y ago
    Well you can pay to promote a post so it will have a higher reach. Businesses should be more appreciative of the fact that 5-10% reach for free is far more free reach than you will get with TV, radio, Google ads, or anything else short of putting flyers on telephone poles.
    - sergiotapia 13y ago
      Well, no. I disagree with what you're saying. If I create a page for my business and share coupons and stuff, people are free to come like my page. That means they want to see more of my stuff voluntarily. Why is Facebook extorting money from the business to allow users to see what they want to see?

nickgrosvenor 13y ago

This is why Facebook is buying other companies because people are migrating away from Facebook. One flaw Facebook has, when everyone's been on it for years they collect hundreds of friends from random old parts of their life. This waters down the experience because random people you barely know posting all the time turns your feed into something less interesting. Toss in more ads combined with old acquaintances, and distant family members and you have a spammy feed. Plus advertisers are mad because they invested in broadening their reach only to have it taken away from them unless they pay to promote. A new social network is a fresh social network, void of your parent's family friends and clothing companies you no longer care about. Facebook is myspace all over again. The most telling decline stat, my older sister who is a soccer mom and was obsessed with Facebook for years recently told me, "we don't really go on Facebook anymore, we use instagram." uh-oh, it's the non-technical family member indicator. She was the last one of us to get a smartphone too. That's why Facebook is buying other internet properties. Because their's is on the decline with actual engaged users, their stats might show new users joining quickly, those are probably bots, spammers, and foreigners. Facebook's future is a universal login tool and a place to see you're great aunt's inspiration quote spam.

evgen 13y ago
You realize that at the same time as the occulus rift purchase they announced one billion mobile users, right? No one is moving away from facebook. Everyone has anecdotes but the financial filings have real numbers. They may not be growing at the rates they were in the past, but that was inevitable.

morgante 13y ago

Honestly I still don't get the hubbub over this algorithm change by Facebook. It's a scaling issue Facebook is attempting to solve, in a dramatically different (and IMHO superior) way than Twitter. On both networks, every time you look at your feed you'll only look at the top X items. On Twitter, that'll just be the X most recent items. On Facebook, those X items are picked algorithmically based on the degree of engagement. The latter seems 1000x better and more intelligent than Twitter, even though it technically means not every post I'm subscribed to will make it into my feed. As people spend more and more years on Facebook, we naturally accumulate more friends and pages (personally around 1200 friends and 200 pages). Thus, we're subscribed to more content. Far too much to reasonably make it into our feed. Given that X is fixed, the percentage of any particular source's posts which will make it into X should decline. It seems totally reasonable that which posts make it in are dictated by how much engagement those posts had.

sparkzilla 13y ago
No. Just no. Like many other small businesses, I paid thousands of dollars to Facebook for ads to create fan pages. People who were interested in what I was doing became fans (I had about 4000 in all). There was never any indication from Facebook that they would make it increasingly difficult to reach those people, and those fans were never told that they would not see my posts. Due to changes in their algorithm I watched the views for my posts drop from 1200 to less than 10. Then I was told I had to pay to reach my own fans. Businesses like ours helped grow Facebook by building fan pages but Facebook betrayed us and, more importantly, betrayed our fans. It's sick.
- morgante 13y ago
  Instead of resorting to emotion, can you explain a compelling alternative for how Facebook could actually solve this? Yes, you have 4000 fans. But I'm 99% sure you're not the only page they like. They probably like many other pages, and also have many other friends (2 numbers that increase over time). Do you not see how it's literally impossible for every post I'm subscribed to reach me? This is purely a problem of scale. Most of my friends don't see my updates, because they also have many other friends. But my mom sees every single update I have because I'm her only Facebook friend. Perhaps it's annoying/confusing that Facebook gave you the option to monetarily combat the effects of a growing network. But organic growth also still works.

logn 13y ago

Well that's funny brands are complaining Facebook is selling out. That's like Coca-Cola complaining that the Super Bowl is too commercial. When I joined The Facebook it was for me and my college classmates. There was no such thing as liking a brand (and maybe not even liking at all). I remember most of my friends being surprised when after liking a brand you were inundated with spam. I guess after people obsessively liked things for years, and added every possible friend, the only thing left is to pay for news feed placement.

star0zero 13y ago

My sincere apologies for the sarcasm, but you mean to tell me that your previously free source of massive one click fan reach is no longer free?! There is no possible way that this was intentional ...

j2kun 13y ago

The algorithm they describe is apparently called "EdgeRank." All I can find via Google are really bad infographics and worse layman explanations (ones that make it clear the writer doesn't understand basic graph theory, or is adulterating their understanding for whatever reason). Can anyone post a link to a research-level paper explaining the algorithm? The name EdgeRank makes me think it's a ripoff of PageRank, so are they solving some sort of eigensystem for, what, an incidence matrix instead of an adjacency matrix?

j2kun 13y ago
Ah. It appears to be nothing more complicated than computing this linear formula given, and Facebook has a thousand tiny little knobs for adjusting the parameters. Maybe the problem is that their algorithm is not really an algorithm. PageRank was good because it had an interpretation as a random walk that made sense (before SEO). EdgeRank can only be interpreted as an arbitrary formula.

jsonne 13y ago

I actually kind of feel for facebook. Not even a year ago people were complaining about Facebook not having enough relevant content etc. So they were migrating away. Old facebook was filled with commercial spam and made it a crappy experience. EdgeRank helped with that aspect a lot. Switching hats, this also bothers me though. I'm a marketer for a lot of local businesses through my agency, and obviously this sucks. It's still a really valuable platform from a paid perspective. In fact using the some images and copy on facebook versus Reddit I get almost 5x the CTR and conversions. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you're savvy and you're willing to treat Facebook like any other ad network there's still a lot of value to be had. The days of free engagement from pages seems to be coming to an end. That really sucks for people who paid to build their's up. Going back on features like that and screwing people etc. seems to be an endemic of the tech industry as a whole though and not just Facebook. Google Reader anyone? I know this is more of a rant and points out more problems than solutions, but I just wanted to point out the situation is more complex than Facebook is bad let's hate them.

robot_head 13y ago
Nobody paid Google any money to create a following on Google Reader, and then made that following worthless... Not really a fair comparison.
- jsonne 13y ago
  Okay then not google reader. What about the myriad of startups that "pivot" leaving paying customers hanging etc. Frankly too, that was a very small part of my overall point.

estebanrules 13y ago

yawn Another "breakup letter"...fascinating...

froo 13y ago

I don't know what the original author is talking about to be honest. When I use Facebook, my feed is filled with friends & family posts and the very occasional ad. To really put it into perspective, I just opened my Facebook now, first ad is in position 5 in my feed. The next ad popped in at the 52nd item in my feed. I went looking for a third ad.. I decided to stop after the 200th item in my feed and I generally don't scroll down that far in a single sitting. Sure, there are ads on the side, but I'm more or less blind to those ads because they're always there. That's not to say it was always like this. Candy Crush ads and whatnot used to pop up all the time from certain people. That's why you can hide those. They quickly disappear. I guess it must just be cool to dump on Facebook now.

Irishsteve 13y ago
We must be in different buckets. I signing and I see 1 message from a friend followed by 1 ad, 2 sponsored posts and to the right 4 or 5 ad's in the sidebar.

SnakeDoc 13y ago

I 100% support eat24 in their decision. Facebook is ridiculous now. I requested my "facebook archive" 2 days ago and still have not received my email confirmation with the download link. As soon as I do, I'm deleting my facebook profile as well. Goodbye Facebook. I hoped you would learn from mistakes, but I see you haven't.