The backlash against Facebook seems to be gathering steam. The social networked are complaining more and people with real lives are spending less time connecting via Facebook. I don’t really think people are only now realising that Facebook is the world’s greatest advertising machine. Instead I believe this slow down has everything to do with the expectation of the user.
People have quite happily paid to see advertising in printed publications for years and they understood this to be a fair exchange. Editorial content was nicely mixed with adverts, and in some magazines you could argue that the adverts were as important as the editorial. However, most people don’t go to Facebook to read editorial content. They go to connect with their friends and increasingly their family. Editorial and adverts were never really part of the deal in user’s minds.
So we all went along merrily collecting our contacts and in that process adding a few interests here and there didn’t seem such a bad thing to do for a while. You were after all selecting to ‘like’ things that interest you. All sounds good really from a user and advertisers’ perspective, opting in to see the adverts you want to see is after all the ideal we all strive for.
However, Facebook now has the problem that too many people have been too enthusiastic with their ‘likes’ so for many people when they log onto Facebook now, they aren’t met with cute baby pictures, evidence of a drunken night out or a funny cartoon someone has shared, they are met with editorial and adverts on their wall. Unfortunately for Facebook – that’s not really what the people signed up for.
This doesn’t make Facebook a bad place to advertise. It does mean companies need to consider carefully how often they post content on their wall. Ideally Facebook would also reconsider how the wall actually functions, but as Facebook is already a usability nightmare I say that in trepidation!