The sky is falling!
The end is nigh!!
This is #FacebookZERO!!
It’s a Facebook Apocalypse!
Freakouts aside, if you’ve been following all the chaos since Mark Zuckerberg made his announcement about sweeping changes to the News Feed, you might assume that Facebook is no longer a place for businesses. (At least not for free.)
And perhaps part of that is true.
The BIG Facebook News Feed Announcement
Zuckerberg made an announcement on January 11, 2018 that some have labeled “Facebook’s Nuclear Bomb“:
You can read the post for yourself, but these are the highlights:
- People feel better and happier when they have conversations with friends on Facebook
- Focus shifting from “helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions”
- More posts from friends, family and groups
- “You’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media”
- This change may mean people spend less time on Facebook
This video from Facebook sums it up quite well:
The Social Media World Responds
Most of the response I’ve seen about this Facebook change has been gloom and doom. People are freaking out.
Mike Stelzner from Social Media Examiner was the first one to go Live on Facebook about this and used the hashtag #FacebookZero to describe his feelings about it.
His video has over 540k views as of writing this:
Brian Grimes-Viorrt from Social Element had this to say:
“The days of organic reach are definitely over. Businesses already have to invest in ads on Facebook to get their content in front of their audiences. But there will be fewer opportunities to buy ads, so the prices will be higher.”
Mari Smith added this thought to the conversation:
“Folks, this is a pretty HUGE update today. Sigh. “Facebook Zero,” here we come… it was always on the cards. That is, to see solid ROI on Facebook, businesses must invest in ads. The good news, though, is advertising done properly on Facebook and Instagram can dramatically grow your business.”
Joe Lazauskas of Contently made this proclamation:
“I always balked at past predictions of Facebook’s demise, but this will seriously hurt the company. People will spend less time on Facebook, which will make it less important to marketers who pay for content distribution. Start adjusting your strategy accordingly: prioritize owned media and transfer as much of your audience as you can to your email lists. That way, you’ll have a direct line to them.”
Mike Isaac of the New York Times had this thought:
“Thursday’s changes raise questions of whether people may end up seeing more content that reinforces their own ideologies if they end up frequently interacting with posts and videos that reflect the similar views of their friends or family. And bogus news may still spread — if a relative or friend posts a link with an inaccurate news article that is widely commented on, that post will be prominently displayed.”
Chris Cunningham of Unacast said this:
“The impact of the News Feed (algorithm change) will be positive for user experience but terrible for brands, publishers and other third-party players. ”
Marcus Andrews of Hubspot weighed in on the changes:
“Facebook has clearly put a stake in the ground that user experience is more important that the brands that pay them. By making this shift they clearly prioritized one over the other, and are potentially a bit nervous about the current (really negative) narrative about the negative impact of social media on society. Organic reach for business pages on Facebook has been under assault for a long time now, this is not new.”
Not all the reactions were negative however.
Joel Comm said this in a comment thread:
“Feeds are way too overloaded with too many page likes. Groups are way more effective. You want to play, you pay. And if it becomes cost prohibitive for people to do so, that just means Facebook is prime for disruption, right?”
Douglass Karr of DKNewMedia says:
“No one can stop great content from being shared socially. We will continue with our efforts.”
David Foster of GeeksLife said:
“I understand, it will be a change for sure, but I don’t think it is such a huge shift that we need to think all doomsday like. Facebook is notorious for this kind of thing. ”
You get the picture.
What Does The Facebook News Feed Change Mean for Your Business?
In reality we don’t know the answer to this exactly — not yet anyway.
You’re probably guaranteed to see lower reach, especially if you aren’t getting much engagement now.
Conversations are Gold
Facebook’s new focus…
