6 ms·

There are lots of businesses you might follow and want to get updates from: your kids karate school, your favourite band, the local revue theatre, your yoga stu

There are lots of businesses you might follow and want to get updates from: your kids karate school, your favourite band, the local revue theatre, your yoga studio, the bar on the corner, your mayor ... This ongoing "crack down" on company pages doesn't just "sting entrepreneurs" it is day by day making Facebook less useful to me. Now our karate dojo needs to take out an ad to let us know it is kata week? I think this is one of the weaknesses that may allow a competitor to eventually pry me away from Facebook; let me control what I want to see.

MichaelApproved 12y ago
In the end, email is the best way to communicate with your customers. You have full control over the list. Even though gmail might push the content to promotions tab, the customer can change that setting for your emails and receive it in their inbox. Facebook is double dipping. It's charging customers to acquire the likes and then charging them again to communicate with those customers. With email, you pay once to acquire the customer and then you can email them all you like until they unsubscribe.
- saraid216 12y ago
  > In the end, email is the best way to communicate with your customers. Except being flagged as spam kinda sucks.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- bigbugbag 12y ago
  Also RSS.
- bigbugbag 12y ago
  Event quadruple dipping as customers are sold to advertisers and with the recent ToS change, content posted on the site is now no more owned by posters.
  - walterbell 12y ago
    Do you have a pointer on the content ownership change? It's not easy to keep up with the flow of FB policy changes.
- duncanawoods 12y ago
  How long until the "free" email clients of the ad giants require payment for visibility of promotional emails? The promotions tab in gmail basically a page 4 of google search. How convenient that a recent "Google Cloud Platform" advert hit my inbox and not the promotions tab...
- dspillett 12y ago
  > In the end, email is the best way to communicate with your customers. I can't say I agree there. It used to be, but not now. The signal-to-noise ratio for mail is very wrong for many people especially those who don't know any better and give out their address to every web form that asks for it. Spam protection has too many false positives when you ramp it up to the point of bringing that significantly down. For a relatively technical audience RSS is probably the way to go, but for the karate school example that isn't going to fly as you'll need to get people "get into something new" to get their updates so just a basic web page is the most reliable thing (though that has less "push" than the other options as people have to remember to go look). Facebook used to be a good compromise. Changes over the recent times and those that are planned are changing that.
  - Swizec 12y ago
    I think you overestimate how much email real people receive. Especially because a lot of people use separate business/work and personal emails. My mum for instance will absolutely at least see, if not open and reply to, anything that hits her inbox. These people also actively teach spam filters that they like the email you or I would consider spam. Think "Fwd: Re: Re: Fwd: Fwd: Re: Re: Look at this slideshow somebody made 10 years ago" And the more I observe people, the more I see that every demographic out there religiously checks their email semi-regularly while everything on Facebook, Twitter and the like goes mostly ignored and/or filtered out so they can't see it. Email is the last bastion of "User actually sees your stuff". The only more reliable way of reaching people than email is sending them an SMS. Anecdata: I run an email list with 50% average open rate.
GuiA 12y ago
That's why I like Twitter. I know everything tweeted by accounts I follow will end up in my feed. Although, as another commenter said, email ultimately is the best communication channel.
- ryanhuff 12y ago
  There has been talk about Twitter managing your feed, so at some point, you may not see all tweets of accounts you follow.
- droidist2 12y ago
  Definitely. Twitter and Pinterest are my favorites. Twitter for the above reasons, and Pinterest because you can follow whichever topics (boards) of a person you want. I also like that neither has a real name policy.
- fleitz 12y ago
  How is email the best? This is a business, email happens to be free, but that doesn't mean people will read it, etc. It could well be that it's more profitable to pay Facebook than to use email, similarly to how buying the most expensive location for your shop can be more profitable than the cheapest location. God forbid, you try to open a business on land that is 'free'. Fundamentally the people in the article are getting more than 50% of their business from Facebook, it's clearly a valuable service.
- robk 12y ago
  Twitter has the same discovery problem. Every non-tech user I know on Twitter has a few hundred chatty celebrities on their feed. If they check Twitter once a day or every other day, there's no way they'd see the quality post through all the celeb banter.
  - flurdy 12y ago
    Do people really just read their main twitter feed? I have to admit I rarely do, I check moistly only my lists as they are less noisy and focused on what I am looking for. If people get to chatty I remove them from that list, but keep them on the main feed.
Fede_V 12y ago
I don't follow any brands or business on Facebook - it seems incredibly counter productive, but I can understand that people have different opinions/need from me. How about letting people see the ads from corporations/business they choose to follow, but prevent them from sharing those ads with their own friends? If you are interested in Nike shoes, more power to you, but I really, really don't want to hear about it.
netcan 12y ago
I agree. But I think the problem is that too many people have liked too many random pages. "Like" is ambiguous. It can mean "that was funny" or "yes i want to win an ipad!" You can like a comment or a picture or a company. like = show me everything this page posts is a broken paradigm. IMO, they just let people make friends with pages in addition to likes. Have a big old "unfriend" button next to every page post to encourage a small friend list. I think Facebook are looking at their median users liked pages. The ratio of "your daughter's karate school" to "random brand that posted a funny picture" is totally out of kilter. Posting everything to their timeline would drown out the people. They also have very little confidence in letting people control their own experience. In fairness, their median user is far less sophisticated than Twitter's. Also, Facebook is very ambient. I am a very lightweight FB user. But, if I log in it doesn't feel like some app I registered on and abandoned. It's full of stuff from people I know. The baseline experience for a thoughtless user like me is pretty good. But I agree in general, there are pages that people want to hear from. These are not likely to be the pages that appear in their timeline. The paradigm sucks.
psykovsky 12y ago
This is facebook going the way of myspace. Godspeed!
psykovsky 12y ago
This is facebook going the way of myspace. Godspeed!

MichaelApproved 12y ago

In the end, email is the best way to communicate with your customers. You have full control over the list. Even though gmail might push the content to promotions tab, the customer can change that setting for your emails and receive it in their inbox. Facebook is double dipping. It's charging customers to acquire the likes and then charging them again to communicate with those customers. With email, you pay once to acquire the customer and then you can email them all you like until they unsubscribe.

saraid216 12y ago
> In the end, email is the best way to communicate with your customers. Except being flagged as spam kinda sucks.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
bigbugbag 12y ago
Also RSS.
bigbugbag 12y ago
Event quadruple dipping as customers are sold to advertisers and with the recent ToS change, content posted on the site is now no more owned by posters.
- walterbell 12y ago
  Do you have a pointer on the content ownership change? It's not easy to keep up with the flow of FB policy changes.
duncanawoods 12y ago
How long until the "free" email clients of the ad giants require payment for visibility of promotional emails? The promotions tab in gmail basically a page 4 of google search. How convenient that a recent "Google Cloud Platform" advert hit my inbox and not the promotions tab...
dspillett 12y ago
> In the end, email is the best way to communicate with your customers. I can't say I agree there. It used to be, but not now. The signal-to-noise ratio for mail is very wrong for many people especially those who don't know any better and give out their address to every web form that asks for it. Spam protection has too many false positives when you ramp it up to the point of bringing that significantly down. For a relatively technical audience RSS is probably the way to go, but for the karate school example that isn't going to fly as you'll need to get people "get into something new" to get their updates so just a basic web page is the most reliable thing (though that has less "push" than the other options as people have to remember to go look). Facebook used to be a good compromise. Changes over the recent times and those that are planned are changing that.
- Swizec 12y ago
  I think you overestimate how much email real people receive. Especially because a lot of people use separate business/work and personal emails. My mum for instance will absolutely at least see, if not open and reply to, anything that hits her inbox. These people also actively teach spam filters that they like the email you or I would consider spam. Think "Fwd: Re: Re: Fwd: Fwd: Re: Re: Look at this slideshow somebody made 10 years ago" And the more I observe people, the more I see that every demographic out there religiously checks their email semi-regularly while everything on Facebook, Twitter and the like goes mostly ignored and/or filtered out so they can't see it. Email is the last bastion of "User actually sees your stuff". The only more reliable way of reaching people than email is sending them an SMS. Anecdata: I run an email list with 50% average open rate.

GuiA 12y ago

That's why I like Twitter. I know everything tweeted by accounts I follow will end up in my feed. Although, as another commenter said, email ultimately is the best communication channel.

ryanhuff 12y ago
There has been talk about Twitter managing your feed, so at some point, you may not see all tweets of accounts you follow.
droidist2 12y ago
Definitely. Twitter and Pinterest are my favorites. Twitter for the above reasons, and Pinterest because you can follow whichever topics (boards) of a person you want. I also like that neither has a real name policy.
fleitz 12y ago
How is email the best? This is a business, email happens to be free, but that doesn't mean people will read it, etc. It could well be that it's more profitable to pay Facebook than to use email, similarly to how buying the most expensive location for your shop can be more profitable than the cheapest location. God forbid, you try to open a business on land that is 'free'. Fundamentally the people in the article are getting more than 50% of their business from Facebook, it's clearly a valuable service.
robk 12y ago
Twitter has the same discovery problem. Every non-tech user I know on Twitter has a few hundred chatty celebrities on their feed. If they check Twitter once a day or every other day, there's no way they'd see the quality post through all the celeb banter.
- flurdy 12y ago
  Do people really just read their main twitter feed? I have to admit I rarely do, I check moistly only my lists as they are less noisy and focused on what I am looking for. If people get to chatty I remove them from that list, but keep them on the main feed.

Fede_V 12y ago

I don't follow any brands or business on Facebook - it seems incredibly counter productive, but I can understand that people have different opinions/need from me. How about letting people see the ads from corporations/business they choose to follow, but prevent them from sharing those ads with their own friends? If you are interested in Nike shoes, more power to you, but I really, really don't want to hear about it.

netcan 12y ago

I agree. But I think the problem is that too many people have liked too many random pages. "Like" is ambiguous. It can mean "that was funny" or "yes i want to win an ipad!" You can like a comment or a picture or a company. like = show me everything this page posts is a broken paradigm. IMO, they just let people make friends with pages in addition to likes. Have a big old "unfriend" button next to every page post to encourage a small friend list. I think Facebook are looking at their median users liked pages. The ratio of "your daughter's karate school" to "random brand that posted a funny picture" is totally out of kilter. Posting everything to their timeline would drown out the people. They also have very little confidence in letting people control their own experience. In fairness, their median user is far less sophisticated than Twitter's. Also, Facebook is very ambient. I am a very lightweight FB user. But, if I log in it doesn't feel like some app I registered on and abandoned. It's full of stuff from people I know. The baseline experience for a thoughtless user like me is pretty good. But I agree in general, there are pages that people want to hear from. These are not likely to be the pages that appear in their timeline. The paradigm sucks.

psykovsky 12y ago

This is facebook going the way of myspace. Godspeed!

psykovsky 12y ago

This is facebook going the way of myspace. Godspeed!