What Facebook Should Admit

WebProNews quotes a long answer to the question many advertisers are asking about organic reach via their pages on Facebook. Facebook spokespeople have been trying to answer this question for a long time, and advertisers just aren’t satisfied.

I have a number of problems with Facebook, which I will outline below, but the way they’re handling page posts isn’t one of them. Yes, my own organic reach has dropped  on my very small Facebook page for Energion Publications. But I expected that. You see, Facebook has to make money just like I do. They make enormously, almost incomprehensibly more money than I do, but still, they are a business and they have to eventually drive revenue.

Internet users have become spoiled. They expect to get everything for nothing. People who provide services and information need to generate revenue somehow, and that generally means advertising. So it’s simple. They have to make money.

In the case of Facebook, that means they need to have a large base of users, mostly satisfied, and they have to someone get paid to put some information in front of those users. They aren’t going to pay to get baby announcements from their friends and extended family. So the answer is advertising.

The only objection I have in this is that someone at Facebook hasn’t just said, “Look, we have to make money. Why on earth did you expect us to provide free access forever and how did you think we’d pay for it?” The old economic adage, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch” applies.

That said, I still don’t like Facebook. But my objection is entirely personal. I am fine with Facebook as a business. In fact, almost all my visits involve maintaining my business page. I pay for some advertising there as well.

And I’m not boycotting Facebook either. I’m just using it about as much as it pleases me to use it. So when my wife directs me to a picture of one or more of our grandchildren, or tags me in a comment that relates to a family post, I’ll go look at it. When I do, I’ll glance at the first few stories in the “most recent” feed.

If the “most recent” feed was actually made up of most recent posts, I’d probably still be a satisfied Facebook user. In fact, they keep promoting stuff that my friends have commented on, so “most recent” generally includes the comments, and I really don’t care. I used to scan the feed (I scan very quickly), until I got back to the material from my last scan, and then I’d move on. Now I can’t work that efficiently. I have some algorithm designer trying to present to me the stuff that I’m going to want to see–in his or her opinion–and I don’t care for that opinion.

So I’m on Facebook much less. My social media time that used to be spent on Facebook is divided between Google+ and Twitter, both of which have their own problems, but with various tools allow me to get the material that interests me.

In general, however, I think everyone should expect that somewhere, somehow, someone is going to have to pay for quality content online. There’s no free lunch. We can keep trying to avoid it, but it will happen.