Hey facebook users, have you become frustrated with this social network site? Have you recently noticed a significant drop in your reach numbers of your fan pages and are you seeing less and less of your many of your friend’s posts on the home page feed except for those people whose posts you constantly “like”, share or comment on and other friends seem to have disappeared? Well, you’re not alone and no, you’re not hallucinating or getting dropped by all your friends (well, maybe some people are but I don’t want to assume that about anyone! 😉 ) This is actually happening thanks to facebook changing algorithms to basically try to force you into buying ad space and boosts to posts if you want the bulk of your friends and fans to be able to see what you’re up to even though they’ve voluntarily “liked” your pages and are following you!
Now to many this might be no big deal but to people like myself who are freelance artists, small businesses and other people who rely on what facedbook initially promised with their services, this is a huge problem! I know, I know, facebook is free and a private company that can do as they will but they’re also uber-super-duper rich due to all the good folks like us who made facebook what it is today and they’re now going against the initial foundations and promises of what the site was to stand for! Seems greed is kicking in full force and as usual the new plans and formats seem to cater to bigger businesses and squelch those of us on limited budgets trying to utilize facebook to it’s fullest…and after all, anyone who uses it and links it to other sites, is giving back free promotion in exchange!
Therapy 3 (c)Lauren Curtis
I first noticed a sudden, major drop in the reach of my art page (link below) posts a couple of months ago…I have over 1500 fans and close to 4,000 friends and was averaging about 350+ views per fan page post and around 30-60+ “likes” and more comments per profile page post. Suddenly those numbers seemed to be cut in half even though I was posting more than ever and following all the SEO and marketing rules I could find about interesting content and getting people involved in the best way possible. I didn’t know what was going on until a friend of mine sent me a link to an article (below) describing the exact same scenario another person was having who has a lot more followers and fans than I do…yet she still saw a huge drop in her post response! I know that my numbers aren’t huge in the grand scheme of social networking but relatively speaking I’m no slouch, and I work my butt off to not only promote my art but post interesting images and content, and support other people’s pages/groups as well! Yet, I cannot afford to pay, nor will not, to expand the reach of my pots to people I worked hard to network with and who want to follow my posts yet are being blocked by the very network they’re on! Yes, facebook is a great service but it’s the people on it that make it a success!
So, now I’m going to cave in and finally join Twitter! Nothing against Twitter but I’m already on so many different sites I had to draw the line somewhere, but after doing some research the consensus seems to be that Twitter is starting to give facebook a run for their money as far as being a better place for people like me to promote and share our work. And now that you can post images on Twitter (initially you couldn’t so as an artist that didn’t appeal to me), it has even more appeal for me. And with services like HootSuite where you can post to multiple sites at once, here I come Twitter!
But don’t take it from me…I posted the link to the article I read so you can judge for yourself and I’d love to hear any comments, feedback and information you have out there in the bloggosphere…please post your comments here and let me know about what you’re experiences are with these sites and if you’re going through the same thing or not…we can all learn more about this ever-changing world wide web!
http://www.businessinsider.com/2014s-biggest-threat-to-facebook-2013-12
My art page: http://www.facebook.com/LaurenCurtisArtTalonArt
Lauren's Creative Corner 
Hi Lauren, I do agree with what you are saying about Facebook, I am having the same problem. I paid for some Facebook advertising and received about 2200 likes – good and well, the problem is I am convinced that not even a hundred of these new ‘likes’ get to see my page. But Facebook is clever, they draw you in, you advertise, they go all out to get the likes for you, however subsequent advertising does not get the same results, the second time I advertised I got a mere 40 likes AND the advertising cost more money. The spin doctors who sit in the palace of Facebook will either make it work for you or they will not! I have given up on advertising on Facebook and am considering deleting my page – funny thing is now they keep on sending me emails on how advantageous it is to advertise…that is a laugh. With regard to ‘likes’ on postings since the start of 2014, my likes have dropped by half – people are not seen my posts.
Greed is like a giant octopus and Facebook is being devoured by it, they are riding a ‘high horse’ which hopefully will stumble and fall. Knowing the humble beginnings of Facebook, I never thought they would get this greedy and controlling that which makes them money.
I have used Twitter for many years and quite frankly never expected anything from them, but 4 (or 5) years later I can say that only now am I seeing some results, but I do not mind, they never promised me anything to begin with and I have never had to pay anything either, so I am happy to use Twitter,it is what it is.
Thanks so much for your comment, Caroline! Yes, greed is ruining this country now more than ever….the average person is treated like a # to squeeze money from without any thought to more far reaching effects of doing bad business. At this point I’m still doing well enough with FB not to delete my accounts but will definitely be joining Twitter as well and maybe other sites too to do as much as can to promote my work. Wishing you much success and maybe I’ll see you on Twitter soon!
Yes Lauren- I noticed a significant drop in viewers on my Fan page as well as my own personal page. Thank you for the article.
Glad it helped..maybe I’ll see you on Twitter? 😉
It’s all true. I have a pathetic number of likes but a few dedicated commenters. I linked my facebook page to my twitter page so anything that goes up on facebook automatically goes on twitter. Makes it a little easier.
Hey Jill..yup, everyone’s seeing these negative changes! I have my FB page linked to my blog and website and this blog is connected to LinkedIn and Google+ too so I do what I can to get my work out there and Twitter is next when I have the energy, lol.