Live data from Hacker News

Biggest drop in Facebook organic reach we have seen

medium.com

91–100 of 138 posts

Re: Biggest drop in Facebook organic reach we have seen

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Facebook is like a game where the difficulty rises after you've had a taste of success. And by difficulty I mean you have to pay to reach your previously levels of success" Your analogy would sound better, and imo, reflect reality more if you swapped out 'game' for 'drug'. That is to say, Facebook is like a drug (like heroin), the more you use it the more you have to pay to get the same level of high. Don't become…

Except that doesn't work as an analogy because the end-users are not the ones paying.

It does work as an analogy, because the difference between heroin, and a useful product is that heroin doesn't make your life better. Becoming addicted to heroin means that not using it makes your life worse then using it, even if the net value add is negative.

I often feel the same way about Facebook. I stay on because the cost of disconnecting is too high, not because its particular implementation of 'A social network' for what I pay for it (Time and ad spam) is a net gain.

Re: Biggest drop in Facebook organic reach we have seen

#92

What are even facebook "pages you follow"? Is it anything that isn't a personal fb account in the friend list? Do groups count in this category, or are groups a third category? I don't think I follow any "pages" such as those created by companies or artists (apart from personal accounts). If "pages" were basically fb's equivalent of corporate accounts, why would you want to follow them? Isn't that like signing up for…

any newspaper.

https://www.facebook.com/bloombergbusiness/

https://www.facebook.com/APNews/

https://www.facebook.com/RollingStone/

https://www.facebook.com/roadsandkingdoms/

https://www.facebook.com/IEEE.org/

the best is to make a list. i have 200 pages in a list, and use it as my facebook bookmark instead of my newsfeed.

Re: Biggest drop in Facebook organic reach we have seen

#93
post #89

As a former active user on Facebook, this sort of change may succeed in bringing people like me back to the site. The minimal effort required in hitting that "share" button means that every page that organically reached my friends would end up polluting my news feed as well with crap that I wasn't interested in and got in the way of what I had originally joined FB for. If my friends aren't seeing these posts, they wo…

Agreed here. I feel like I am constantly fighting to filter out all this "content" from external sites. I feel like I can't even see the stuff I joined FB for- to see pictures/updates to see what my friends are up to. Instagram is much better for this these days, the signal/noise ratio is getting so low on FB that I find myself going on just out of habit, not because of the information I get from there. It has shades…

You can view "Most Recent" in the app, just have to grab it from your feeds tab.

Re: Biggest drop in Facebook organic reach we have seen

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's standard go to strategy once you control the supply chain. Maybe it should be called Walmart strategy because it was perfected by them. First they propose a deal. You get access to the massive Walmart supply channel for this good deal. Sales volumes and profits soar. Half year later Walmart buyers negotiate price little lower, then lower still. You must lower the quality of the brand little to make it. And it go…

For more info on this strategy, see this study of Walmart's squeeze of Vlasic (pickles). https://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know

How is this a Walmart problem though? This is a totally natural result of free-market competition. When two competing pizza restaurants can no longer squeeze a lower price by reducing quality or working staff harder, they move the production offshore to countries with lower costs (usually looks like slavery). If we want to stop this natural phenomenon we would need new trade agreements to provide a financial incentive to keep the production within USA. I'm not a fan of Walmart but this is not at all a fair criticism of their business practices.

Re: Biggest drop in Facebook organic reach we have seen

#95
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed here. I feel like I am constantly fighting to filter out all this "content" from external sites. I feel like I can't even see the stuff I joined FB for- to see pictures/updates to see what my friends are up to. Instagram is much better for this these days, the signal/noise ratio is getting so low on FB that I find myself going on just out of habit, not because of the information I get from there. It has shades…

You can view "Most Recent" in the app, just have to grab it from your feeds tab.

Is this new-ish? I remember looking for this awhile back and not being able to find it.

Thank you though!

Re: Biggest drop in Facebook organic reach we have seen

#96

Facebook pulling a bait and switch for newspapers that forces them to pay to reach an audience they used to reach for free (organic reach)? This has only happened repeatedly in the history of facebook. Facebook is like a game where the difficulty rises after you've had a taste of success. And by difficulty I mean you have to pay to reach your previous levels of success. Facebook did this for those first games (e.g. F…

> But I figure everyone knew this about 5 years ago if not earlier. This is something that keep surprising me. This year we had stories after stories against facebook. But nothing unexpected. Only about things we said again and again would happen, for years. We wrote about it. We discussed about it with friends. But apparently, being loud and clear about something very obvious is not enough. When things are too good…

I hate that frog analogy. People always use it as shorthand for "small changes over time go unnoticed" but in the actual experiment, the frogs were basically lobotomized.

So how are we lobotomized? One sort of answer would be how people are convinced that their data is not important. They are convinced of this while Google and Facebook mine it to no end and the NSA stores pretty much everything you do in Utah. So maybe you don't think it's important, but Some very big players who have a lot more money and knowledge sure do.

Re: Biggest drop in Facebook organic reach we have seen

#97

As a former active user on Facebook, this sort of change may succeed in bringing people like me back to the site. The minimal effort required in hitting that "share" button means that every page that organically reached my friends would end up polluting my news feed as well with crap that I wasn't interested in and got in the way of what I had originally joined FB for. If my friends aren't seeing these posts, they wo…

> my friends would end up polluting my news feed as well with crap that I wasn't interested in and got in the way of what I had originally joined FB for

A few weeks ago I went back on Facebook and took the time to try cleaning it up. I went through every shared article and clicked "hide post" and "hide all posts from site". Some bullshit shares still make it into my feed, but mostly it's pictures and actual updates from friends and family again.

This was after I got sick of the crap people were sharing and stopped using Facebook last year. Unfortunately it also meant I missed a few big family events that were announced on Facebook. My brother moved and didn't mention it when I called him because he had posted so much on Facebook that he figured I already knew.

Re: Biggest drop in Facebook organic reach we have seen

#98

Facebook pulling a bait and switch for newspapers that forces them to pay to reach an audience they used to reach for free (organic reach)? This has only happened repeatedly in the history of facebook. Facebook is like a game where the difficulty rises after you've had a taste of success. And by difficulty I mean you have to pay to reach your previous levels of success. Facebook did this for those first games (e.g. F…

At least with games like Farmville, they did it because there was a huge backlash from users who were sick and tired of their friends spamming them with game invites and cluttering up their news feeds with game updates.

Facebook did the right thing.

Re: Biggest drop in Facebook organic reach we have seen

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is absolutely annoying as well. It's as if Facebook should show me the things I've asked it to, and show you the things you've asked it to, and not try and take mine away or give them to you.

Inferring that people that are “friends” may share the same interests doesn’t seem that unreasonable to me.

It is very unreasonable for users who hundreds of friends to expect interests to he similiar. This could be excused for a smaller site but facebook has detailed metrics on what I liked where I visited outside of facebook and what purchases I made.

Using that targeting is much more effective compared to friend's interest.

Re: Biggest drop in Facebook organic reach we have seen

#100

As a former active user on Facebook, this sort of change may succeed in bringing people like me back to the site. The minimal effort required in hitting that "share" button means that every page that organically reached my friends would end up polluting my news feed as well with crap that I wasn't interested in and got in the way of what I had originally joined FB for. If my friends aren't seeing these posts, they wo…

Anecdata: I'm also an old user (joined around 2006). I deactivated my account because I also found the noise level to get too high.

Facebook still won, though, because I've switched to Instagram.

Post reply on HN