It’s official now. I had suspected it for a while, but this post from Simply Zesty
shows that page admins across the world are wondering why the ‘Reach’ figures of their posts are on the downswing. This then starts affecting the other ‘vital stats’ of the Page as well – like PTAT. It really doesn’t matter whether FB is showing the actual reach number (you may question that if you’re also monitoring via 3rd party apps) or decreasing it further just to pile on the pain, because fundamentally they’re throttling the reach and you would have to go by the numbers they claim, because well, it’s official!
I’d say that FB is now behaving like a true media monopoly. It’d have been fine if the % of people who saw a page post were dependent on the positive/negative action taken by the people who liked the page. But this is just an “offer you can’t refuse” for the various advertising products that FB has begun pushing out aggressively. Should have known that IPOs have side effects. It hurts more because just sometime back, I’d written – in my ‘Social grows up to be media‘ post – that of the two (FB, Twitter) I had better hopes for FB. While Facebook owns the platform, (some) brands have done a lot of hard work in attaining fans organically through excellent content and engagement. By not allowing the content to reach these very fans, FB is being unfair. It becomes even more interesting when we figure that FB is now allowing brands to truly broadcast (beyond fans and friends of fans to everyone) their posts. On one hand, they are making their money from brands and at the same time, showing me an ad I never asked to see.
This could be just the start. I’m already hearing ‘viewpoints‘ of Facebook charging brands for pages. Knowing the way PR works, FB is probably setting the scene for this and we’ll be seeing more articles of this nature. Is this an unfair way to monetise one’s platform? That, in Facebook’s own words, is complicated.
More importantly, the larger debate of whether one should build (on) owned properties now becomes even more pertinent. What do you think?
until next time, pay walled…