Monday, August 04, 2014

Biggest threat to Facebook ad revenue is...a blogger?

OK, the biggest threat to Facebook ad revenue is not a blogger, per se, but what she represents.

Stephanie Stiavetti is a famous food writer with an online following that is nothing to laugh at. With social media presence that spans multiple channels, she recently decided to leave Facebook.

In her blog titled The Woes of Facebook she wrote --

"I have 8,000 followers. Over the past few months my engagement has slowed to less than a trickle – a tiny fraction of what it was at the beginning of the year. Now, when I post to my Facebook page for The Culinary Life, only 100 people see those posts (on average). Facebook then tries to charge me $20 so that you can see my content. Given that I don’t make any money from the stories and photos I post ... paying hundreds of dollars a month to access you, the fans who willingly liked my page, is just not possible. To make matter worse, Facebook has been charging page owners to run ads, which is in essence buying followers. That’s not a problem in and of itself, but when they charge to grow a page’s following and then remove access to those very same followers after they’ve accepted money for them, well, I find that incredibly unethical…I’m very sad that Facebook has decided to exclude the blogging community from accessing our loyal friends and fans ... It’s terrible that Facebook has decided to hide our work from your eyes after you’ve already expressed interest in seeing it. We are not large brands selling products..."

Spokespeople for several companies have shared that the "reach" of their Facebook posts declined by upto 80% after Facebook updated its News Feed algorithm. Facebook claims that it changed its algorithm to enhance the user experience, but retail companies think it may have been a ploy to increase ad revenue.

What do you think? Is Facebook's pure in its intentions? And, if not, does it really matter? So what if it wanted to increase ad spend?

Full story here: http://www.businessinsider.com/2014s-biggest-threat-to-facebook-2013-12



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