I have watched the evolution of Facebook pages closely over the last two years; mainly because I have a dog in the fight. I spent a lot of money on promoting Facebook pages for my websites; spurred on by the promotional nudge of Facebook themselves.
Sadly, page reach has decreased significantly over the last two years. From a user point of view, I realise that this was necessary due to Facebook users liking every page they come across. The result being that, over time, their own user experience was suffering about it.
Though from a website owner’s point of view, it has been frustrating to deal with the changes that Facebook introduce frequently (something I discussed in-depth last year).
It seems that Facebook have decided to change things up again. I read a short post on Engadget two days ago entitled “Facebook wants to clean up spam in your News Feed“.
The updated news feed will apparently show less spammy posts. They will be negating the affects of:
- “Like-Baiting” posts that ask users to like, share or comment.
- Updates that contain photos and videos that have been uploaded in the past.
- Links that trick you into clicking through to a page with lots of ads.
When I initially read the post, I thought to myself “Oh no, here we go again”. I was quick to realise that this is good news. I am sick of all these pages who are getting ahead by posting the same photos over and over again; not to mention all of those pages that are growing exponentially by using the “Tag a Friend” suggestion in updates.
This is clearly bad news for viral websites that have been using aggressive marketing techniques to get ahead of the crowd. For the rest of us, a cleaner news feed with less clutter will hopefully mean we get a better response from our own Facebook pages.
Kevin
Yeah people do become ad blind over time. However, with the sheer volume of people that use Facebook, they will still see a huge number of clicks.
It’s no telling with Facebook. I’ve only got Facebook advertising with clicks. At least I know if they clicked that they actually saw the ad. Some people don’t even look at the ads, including me.
I hadn’t noticed that. Surely they don’t count each rotation as a view?
Kevin
The problem stems from them showing pictures and videos that people in my friend list have liked or commented on. They would clear a lot of the mess up by simply showing post updates and nothing more.
Kevin
Hey Kevin,
Facebook needs to clean up their own act. They currently display 7 ads on the right-hand side of the page, as opposed to 3 ads that they used to show. The worse part is that the ads don’t even stay on the page for the members to really check out if they’re interested; they disappear within seconds while being read. I feel that this is cheating the advertisers. Advertisers should choose the click option and not views because their ads won’t get the proper attention if they disappear within so many seconds. Oh yeah, they also have more sponsored ads in the newsfeed in addition to the 7 ads displayed to the right of the page. They have really commercialized the user experience. Thanks for sharing.
Cheers
I’m fed up with all the spammy ads in my Newsfeed and regurgitated photo’s. I don’t advertise on Facebook but it must be frustrating for those who do whose ad’s disappear in piles of spam.
Roll on having a ‘cleaned up’ Newsfeed!
Shan