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A Breakup Letter to Facebook from Eat24

blog.eat24hours.com

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Re: A Breakup Letter to Facebook from Eat24

#31

Post by JohnTHaller »

maxerickson wrote: post #6
antr wrote: post #2

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…

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.

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.

Re: A Breakup Letter to Facebook from Eat24

#32

Post by mark_l_watson »

leephillips wrote: post #26

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?

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.

Re: A Breakup Letter to Facebook from Eat24

#33

Post by krisoft »

leephillips wrote: post #26

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?

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.

Re: A Breakup Letter to Facebook from Eat24

#35

Post by notahacker »

belorn wrote: post #19
voyou wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Eat24 is mad that Facebook won't carry their ads for free, and I can't say that that's a position I have much sympathy for.

Or Eat24 is mad that Facebook are demanding money to carry Eat24 contents for free. If spotify started to demand money for artists rather than pay them, artists would start to get angry.

Facebook isn't "demanding money to carry Eat24 contents for free". It's suggesting that if they want to bombard large numbers of people with pictures of food to convince them to order takeaway, they probably shouldn't rely on the free feed delivery mechanisms to do so.

Let's not pretend Eat24 was doing Facebook a favour here, or that anyone signed up to Facebook to look at pictures of pizza. Facebook was doing Eat24 a favour, and Eat24 were earning so nicely from it they were willing to experiment with shelling out money to continue distributing the same content.

Re: A Breakup Letter to Facebook from Eat24

#36

Post by protomyth »

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?

Re: A Breakup Letter to Facebook from Eat24

#37

Post by ryandrake »

belorn wrote: post #19
voyou wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Eat24 is mad that Facebook won't carry their ads for free, and I can't say that that's a position I have much sympathy for.

Or Eat24 is mad that Facebook are demanding money to carry Eat24 contents for free. If spotify started to demand money for artists rather than pay them, artists would start to get angry.

I'm not sure I understand the difference between " ads" and "'s content". Facebook is a promotional platform. Content posted there by companies are advertisements, nearly by definition.

Re: A Breakup Letter to Facebook from Eat24

#38

Post by techaddict009 »

protomyth wrote: post #36

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?

Yes it 100 Percent right. It will reach to approx 10% of people who have liked the fan page.

Re: A Breakup Letter to Facebook from Eat24

#39

Post by notahacker »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #31
maxerickson wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 follo…

To be fair, half the time people sign up for purely symbolic reasons, or to participate in a "like us on Facebook to win.." competition and not necessarily because they want daily ads for $brand served to them in between their friends' baby pics and obscure links posted by some guy they once met at an airport.

If you really want regular updates from a vendor you sign up to their mailing list...

Re: A Breakup Letter to Facebook from Eat24

#40

Post by notahacker »

leephillips wrote: post #26

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?

Because Facebook is visited on a daily basis by people who are your customers, and they provide a free method of delivering advertising to those customers (albeit a significantly smaller subset of their customers these days). I guarantee you that Eat24 has made several orders of magnitude more money from running Facebook campaigns than Facebook has made from ads served alongside Eat24 content.
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