The Major Problem With Facebook's News Feed
Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images
This post originally appeared in Business Insider.
Derek Muller, the curator of science video blog Veritasium,
has a pretty large following across a number of social media channels:
21,000 Twitter followers, more than 1 million YouTube subscribers,
and 118,000 Facebook fans. But unlike Twitter and YouTube—where his
content is not filtered—his Facebook fans who have "liked" his page only
ever see a fraction of what he posts.
"The problem with Facebook is that it's keeping things from you," says Muller in a new video. "You don't see most of what's posted by your friends or the pages you follow."
Muller is among many page owners who have seen the reach
of their pages wane over time. Edge Rank Checker recently analyzed
roughly 1,000 different Facebook pages and found another drop in
December of the number of people seeing posts, noting that "the News Feed continues to be a more challenging place to get your content displayed."
So what's the deal? With so many posts being shared
throughout the day on Facebook, Muller says that "clearly some filtering
is required. The problem is Facebook is using its filtering power in
order to make money."
Facebook has repeatedly denied any allegations of "throttling" certain posts or "gaming" its news feed against certain pages. "Where
he does have a point is that even in the competition for organic news
... there's just a lot more competition than there used to be," said
Facebook spokesman Brandon McCormick.
While McCormick admits that Facebook does "curate the
experience," he strongly rejects the argument that Facebook is forcing
people to pay for more exposure. Further, he explained that sponsored
posts in the Newsfeed don't compete with organic posts. They are their
own separate, dedicated advertising slots.
"We give users a lot of control over what they see in
their News Feed," McCormick said. "You can filter the News Feed and see
everything. You can highlight pages you want to see everything from ... a
lot of users may not realize that, but anyone can do those things."
Muller's argument stems from problems with his own page,
Veritasium, of which 118,000 people have become fans. "The last time I
shared a video on there, it only went in the news feeds of about 9,000
people," he claims, a number that is less than 8 percent of his fan
base. "This continues the downward trend in numbers I've been seeing."
In part, Muller's problem is that many of his posts probably aren't interesting enough to deserve a wider audience. Facebook's News Feed algorithm is designed to restrict the reach of posts that get little reaction
from friends and followers, but to promote posts that get high levels
of engagement. It's been this way for months. Most recently, Facebook
tweaked the algorithm to bury pictures of cute cats and surface useful news items.
Facebook advises page owners to produce more "engaging
content"—posts and pictures that get likes, comments, and shares. "It
doesn't mean every single person who's connected is going to see it, but
the more engaging content the more people are going to see it," said McCormick.
With so much content appearing throughout the day, it
seems those likes and shares have a huge impact on whether a post gets
seen. "Don't you think it's possible to see a post and like it or find
it interesting without finding a need to 'like it' or comment on it?"
asks Muller in his video.
"He's not wrong, but in the absence of another signal that
you like that or you're interested in that type of content," McCormick
said, "it's hard for us to know."
The other option, McCormick says, is that he can pay to
get his content in front of more people. Muller could increase his reach
in the form of promoting posts—paying Facebook anywhere from $50 to
thousands of dollars—to ensure they get in front
of the page's fans. That's much easier for a large brand to do, but far
too costly for someone running a small website or nonprofit.
Contrast that with a site like YouTube, where practically
anyone with a video camera can make a video, upload it freely to the
site, and be paid for it if it gets viewed by many others. On the flip
side is Facebook, where people are still creating content, but instead
of getting paid for it, they sometimes need to pay to have it viewed.
"On YouTube the roles of creator, advertiser, and viewer
are distinct," Muller says. "The creators make the videos that the
viewers want to watch, the advertisers make the pre-rolls and the banner
ads, and the majority of viewers are not also creators."
But that model is nowhere close to Facebook. Muller
explains: "The creators are treated like advertisers—they have to pay to
reach the viewers. And viewers themselves are also creators. So viewers
are also advertisers."
Of course, if your YouTube video isn't interesting it
meets the same fate as a dull Facebook post: no one sees it, and no one
knows it's there. The difference between the two is that on Facebook you
can pay to promote material, whereas on YouTube there's not much you
can do—short of buying an ad campaign across Google—to promote videos.
"[On Twitter,] you just see what
you see as you scroll down," said McCormick. "There's a big chunk of
things you don't see, that's the reality of how all services work,
unless you spend your entire day scrolling down. Every company is going
to have a way to organize this information. No user is ever going to be
able to see everything."
Since Facebook did once offer a high level of reach for
free, people feel aggrieved now that it's been taken away. McCormick
compares the changes to search, where in the past you could create a
website and easily use search engine optimization to get it seen in the
top results. That changes every time Google or Microsoft makes a change
to their search algorithm—forcing people to work harder at producing
better content that people want to see, or paying for ads.
Still, Muller is not alone in his criticism. A widely shared October 2012 post from the blog Dangerous Minds called it the "greatest 'bait n' switch' in history." Ironically,
Muller posted his video to his Facebook page and it received much
higher levels of engagement than what he normally receives—likely due to
the large number of likes and shares. Many commenting agreed with him
and offered their own complaints:
"I liked this page months ago but this is the first time I have ever seen it in my news feed," wrote one person.
"I reposted this on my wall.. The irony is that only a small part of my friends list actually sees it.." wrote another.
You can watch Muller's full video below:
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please leave a comment-- or suggestions, particularly of topics and places you'd like to see covered