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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

#91

Post by sergiotapia »

prostoalex wrote: post #87
sergiotapia wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because your page is one of the 400 pages the user liked. Some of those pages are hyperactive as far as new content (New York Times, CNN, etc.) How would you prioritize the stories?

Why not just order them by time created. I don't see what the big fuss is. Twitter does just that.

Re: A Breakup Letter to Facebook from Eat24

#92

Post by sergiotapia »

evgen wrote: post #64
sergiotapia wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No, it does my mean they want to see a constant stream of every promotion and sale you offer. It means that they liked _one thing_ and your page is no different than the thousand other things I have liked last month. You don't have some entitlement to space on my feed. If I am interested then a constant stream of likes to your content will keep you in view. If you convinced me and ten thousand others to like a single…

You're confused. A like _for_ a page is not the same as a like on a _single post_.

Re: A Breakup Letter to Facebook from Eat24

#93

Post by prostoalex »

sergiotapia wrote: post #91
prostoalex wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because your page is one of the 400 pages the user liked. Some of those pages are hyperactive as far as new content (New York Times, CNN, etc.) How would you prioritize the stories?

Why not just order them by time created. I don't see what the big fuss is. Twitter does just that.

Facebook does that too - little dropdown arrow by where it says "News Feed" leading to https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr

It's just apparently not something majority of their users need based on their usage patterns. If they switched to this as default, brands would complain as well, as a post appearing at 7 am is very unlikely to be scrolled down to by a user who checks Facebook at 8 pm their local time zone.

Re: A Breakup Letter to Facebook from Eat24

#94

Post by lotharbot »

notahacker wrote: post #59
lotharbot wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "If you really want regular updates from a vendor you sign up to their mailing list..." Or you follow them on social media because you use it more regularly than you use e-mail, or you find it more convenient.

But the Facebook news feed has never been a reliable delivery mechanism for updates you actually want to receive, because there's always been a huge volume of content with imperfect filters in place; if you really want to check on a brand you either go direct to their Facebook page which is entirely unaffected by filter algorithms or follow them on Twitter or by email. Users who only ever saw a fraction of the brand…

> "the Facebook news feed has never been a reliable delivery mechanism for updates you actually want to receive"

Yes it was. It was great for me for several years. I blocked games and kept my friends list to actual friends, and I was easily able to keep up with peoples' lives AND with products/companies I followed.

Eventually they changed the algorithm enough times, and hid/removed enough options, that I couldn't keep up. I posted a mini-rant in the comments here about it -- how FB's algorithm decided it was more important that I see a random not-very-close high school friend post an offensive political meme than that I see my brother's wedding pictures.

Re: A Breakup Letter to Facebook from Eat24

#95

Post by unclebucknasty »

morgante wrote: post #76
unclebucknasty wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you not see how it's literally impossible for every post I'm subscribed to reach me? And requiring people to pay to reach fans somehow magically fixes this? Does the payment requirement somehow supercede the best algorithms in perfectly balancing post activity? And, do brands with deeper pockets somehow automatically have the most compelling content? Do you sincerely believe that this is all about solving that p…

> Does the payment requirement somehow supercede the best algorithms in perfectly balancing post activity? Yes. That's precisely the point. As a business, you can accept whatever the algorithm dictates or you can pay to override the algorithm (ie. advertising). No different than the tradeoff between hoping a magazine writes an article about you vs. guaranteed reach by purchasing an ad. > This statement is obviously a…

>That's precisely the point. As a business, you can accept whatever the algorithm dictates or you can pay to override the algorithm (ie. advertising).

You're moving the goalposts. The original problem was supposedly one of filtering noise from the consumer end. Now, you're talking about advertiser options for reaching their audiences. Yes, we know they now have a choice to pay or not. That's exactly the point.

To see the difference, consider if one advertiser with a massive budget could afford to pump out, say, 100 messages a day. Is the user now having a better experience?

So, agaim, how does forcing advertisers to pay suddenly balance the posts people see?

Re: A Breakup Letter to Facebook from Eat24

#96

Post by [deleted] »

morgante wrote: post #76
unclebucknasty wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you not see how it's literally impossible for every post I'm subscribed to reach me? And requiring people to pay to reach fans somehow magically fixes this? Does the payment requirement somehow supercede the best algorithms in perfectly balancing post activity? And, do brands with deeper pockets somehow automatically have the most compelling content? Do you sincerely believe that this is all about solving that p…

> Does the payment requirement somehow supercede the best algorithms in perfectly balancing post activity? Yes. That's precisely the point. As a business, you can accept whatever the algorithm dictates or you can pay to override the algorithm (ie. advertising). No different than the tradeoff between hoping a magazine writes an article about you vs. guaranteed reach by purchasing an ad. > This statement is obviously a…

[deleted]

Re: A Breakup Letter to Facebook from Eat24

#97

Post by wutbrodo »

frostmatthew wrote: post #50
sergiotapia wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I just learned about this today. What's the point of having a Facebook page then? Sounds like a gigantic waste of time.

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.

You're not comparing apples to apples. That's 5-10% reach _of people who have opted in to seeing your updates_. The better comparison is that you have 100% reach to people who sign up for your newsletter.

Re: A Breakup Letter to Facebook from Eat24

#98

Post by rebolek »

prostoalex wrote: post #93
sergiotapia wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just order them by time created. I don't see what the big fuss is. Twitter does just that.

Facebook does that too - little dropdown arrow by where it says "News Feed" leading to https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr It's just apparently not something majority of their users need based on their usage patterns. If they switched to this as default, brands would complain as well, as a post appearing at 7 am is very unlikely to be scrolled down to by a user who checks Facebook at 8 pm their local time zone.

You can't switch to this as default, it automagically changes back in few hours/days.

Re: A Breakup Letter to Facebook from Eat24

#99

Post by prostoalex »

rebolek wrote: post #98
prostoalex wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook does that too - little dropdown arrow by where it says "News Feed" leading to https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr It's just apparently not something majority of their users need based on their usage patterns. If they switched to this as default, brands would complain as well, as a post appearing at 7 am is very unlikely to be scrolled down to by a user who checks Facebook at 8 pm their local time zone.

You can't switch to this as default, it automagically changes back in few hours/days.

I have that bookmarked in the browser's toolbar instead of default, but you're right, ability to default is highly dependent on how you reach the facebook.com page.

Re: A Breakup Letter to Facebook from Eat24

#100

Post by waterlesscloud »

sparkzilla wrote: post #80
morgante wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're acting as though Facebook has somehow blocked fans from visiting your page. They're of course free to do so. Given that you accept it's a statistical impossibility for all content I'm subscribed to to reach my feed, what we're debating is priorities. Before this algorithm change, I fully believe it was tilted too far in terms of brands—I received way too many updates from brands and few from my friends. What y…

If your feed before was "tilted too fat in terms of brands" then you could easily have hidden them from the feed or unsubscribed. Your analogy is wrong. Facebook did not write a free story about my business. I paid them to help me gather a group of people who were interested in my business. They never at any point said that I would have to pay to access those users. Then, after I spent a lot of money, time and effort…

The users are hiding you by their inaction on your posts.

If you "like" more posts from a page, you'll see more of their content. If you don't like their posts, you'll see less of it.

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