Facebook seems to be making a lot of tweaks to its News Feed and EdgeRank as of late. In addition to topic grouping, Facebook has been tinkering with EdgeRank to try to give brands more prominence in the News Feed. Many Page admins I’ve spoken to are mentioning an increase in impressions as of late, and many users are saying they’re seeing a lot more brands in their News Feed than they typically see. Although it’s only anecdotal evidence, it’s clear that Facebook is up to something to help out brands. In addition to this anecdotal evidence, there is another change Facebook is making that signifies its emphasis on helping out brands: Facebook has removed the ability for users to unlike a page or unsubscribe from within the News Feed. Traditionally, users were given several options they could take to punish a brand publishing uninteresting content: unliking the page, hiding all posts from the page (unsbuscribing), or hiding the post.
Facebook has now virtually revoked all actions a user can take against a brand from within the News Feed. Now, the only action a user can take is to hide a single piece of content.
To me, these recent actions by Facebook tell two stories:
- Most brands fail at News Feed Optimization. They simply don’t get getting what types of content resonate with their fans. Why else would Facebook remove such simple ways to squelch annoying brands filling up our News Feeds with noise? Brands have to battle against their fans’ friends as well as other brands in order to appear in the News Feed, and they’re losing badly. Enter Facebook’s tweaks to make sure that brands at least appear on the News Feed, even if those impressions hardly result in a like or a comment.
- Facebook owns our social graph, and they know it. Facebook has become such an integral part of our social constructs that even if they make changes that negatively impacts the user experience—such as tweaking their News Feed to become more brand-friendly—people will ultimately still continue to use Facebook. Who cares if users’ News Feeds ends up getting cluttered with annoying updates from brands who have no idea how to be successful on Facebook? Perhaps Facebook is thinking that brands will eventually learn how to engage their fans, and until then, they should keep giving brands a chance by making it harder for fans to unsubscribe and unlike the page.
