I guess they need to do something to increase engagement because - anecdotally, yes - the amount of sharing and engagement in my feed has dropped dramatically in recent years. A rough guess would be ~3/4 of the content I see now are just likes/reactions and comments my friends made on other content (usually articles or memes). I'm sure most of my friends have no idea I'm seeing this, and if they did they would probably interact with FB even less. I'm very hesitant to interact with FB at all now, and just do a quick scroll through every other day.
Facebook to Change News Feed to Focus on Friends and Family
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Re: Facebook to Change News Feed to Focus on Friends and Family
#12This is how Facebook operates. Open up the platform until everyone piles on and basically ruins it, then tighten it back up and start charging those same people to do what they were previously doing for free. They did it with games (they became basically spam until they locked it down). Then when they opened things up to advertising, you could basically run any ad you want to any offer you want. Then they tightened t…
Personally I've been alienated, and many of my non techie friends have been too, but the network effect is just too strong and pulls you back in when old-so-and-so plans their birthday party or whatever.
That's it. I use it purely for answering invitations to events and a handy address book. Otherwise my social media time is away from FB, though, I still spend time on FB in the form of Instagram.
Re: Facebook to Change News Feed to Focus on Friends and Family
#13i.e. - facebook wants to be paid by advertisers instead of being a free promotion platform. Really it makes sense all around though, and you have to wonder what took them so long.
Lock down the growth first, then charge when it's too painful to give up the attention. If they charge too early, then the little to moderate traffic from FB is easier to give up.
Re: Facebook to Change News Feed to Focus on Friends and Family
#14This might get me to browse a little bit more. I have about 1000 friends on Facebook but 60℅ of my feed is news from a small group of publishers (ESPN, The Onion, NYT) and ads.
Agree - If I want to learn more about Brexit I go to NYT, WSJ, etc. FB is for learning about old friends' whereabouts, new babies, etc. Wonder how this will affect the political discourse for the elections this year...
But your friends are going to discuss current events, because that is what people do.
Re: Facebook to Change News Feed to Focus on Friends and Family
#15This is how Facebook operates. Open up the platform until everyone piles on and basically ruins it, then tighten it back up and start charging those same people to do what they were previously doing for free. They did it with games (they became basically spam until they locked it down). Then when they opened things up to advertising, you could basically run any ad you want to any offer you want. Then they tightened t…
Facebook did the same with buy more like and promote posts features.
I have written a blog post about it two years ago.
That's why I don't get into their bandwagon as customer anymore.
Re: Facebook to Change News Feed to Focus on Friends and Family
#16It was focused on that until they introduced all the features people hate
Re: Facebook to Change News Feed to Focus on Friends and Family
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally I've been alienated, and many of my non techie friends have been too, but the network effect is just too strong and pulls you back in when old-so-and-so plans their birthday party or whatever.
That's it. I use it purely for answering invitations to events and a handy address book. Otherwise my social media time is away from FB, though, I still spend time on FB in the form of Instagram.
Interesting. I don't think I've ever used Facebook for anything productive (like RSVPing to something). My newsfeed is a complete and utter wasteland, but there's something interesting and addicting about it. It's like watching a car wreck. It's awful, but you can't look away.
Re: Facebook to Change News Feed to Focus on Friends and Family
#18As someone who runs a niche news site, it's hard to see the point focusing on running a Facebook page anymore. We kind of go through the motions to keep up with appearances, but Facebook is less than 5% of our total overall traffic, and 95% of that portion is all from individuals sharing our content, not from our page directly.
It's just impossible to "bid" on traffic via Facebook and win out over companies that have far bigger budgets, and most importantly feel that eyeballs are far more valuable. A visitor landing on one of our news stories likely is worth less than a few cents. A visitor to a consumer retail site could easily be worth hundreds of dollars. Guess who has the budget to bid big on traffic acquisition here.
There isn't that much real estate for advertisers on FB, and with that it has become incredibly expensive for a media company to grow a legit audience through FB anymore as well.
As a regular FB user though, I think this is an interesting move. I stopped using it to see what my friends are up to long ago as everyone moved to Instagram and Snapchat for their daily happenings. Facebook became a news aggregation service for me, much like Twitter. Might just be my friends, but only a handful are active on the service much anymore with daily updates.
Re: Facebook to Change News Feed to Focus on Friends and Family
#19Pretty straightforward goal like others mentioned - de-prioritize publishers, get them pay more to promote their posts, prioritize them back. Nothing has changed, publishers pay more. So much for "focus on Friends and Family".
Re: Facebook to Change News Feed to Focus on Friends and Family
#20This is how Facebook operates. Open up the platform until everyone piles on and basically ruins it, then tighten it back up and start charging those same people to do what they were previously doing for free. They did it with games (they became basically spam until they locked it down). Then when they opened things up to advertising, you could basically run any ad you want to any offer you want. Then they tightened t…
They've also done it with app developers!