Beginning January 1, Facebook is going to begin limiting Page post visibility again. The criteria this time is posts from Pages that promote themselves. Seriously? Everyone uses Facebook to promote himself or herself. No one posts an ugly profile picture of he or she because we all want to promote the idea that we look good, look like we are having fun, or like a particular flower or child or pet.
My girlfriend uses her Facebook page to brag about her 3 yr old son. She talks about him in every single post. That time he went potty. That time he got a new tooth. That time he sang a song in the back seat of the car. All the things that a 3 year old should be doing, has now become a full assault on our feeds so that we like and comment on his daily successes. To be fair, I like my friends and their children so I will look at every post, and Like every picture.
I have another friend who uses her personal Facebook page to promote her home party for eyelashes. Excessively, cartoonish, long eyelashes are all the rage right now. And, my friend is having a home party and wants me to come. She wants you to come. She wants everyone to come. So, she talks about it in every post, promoting her party. Mind you, her eyelashes are fabulous!
Games. Games, and game notifications clog up my personal Facebook page. I don’t play the games, my friends do, and my friends can earn extra lives by inviting their friends to play with them. I didn’t “choose” to like the game page, and I am not interested in seeing the games or their notifications in my feed. Yet, there they continue to be. Okay, I hide all of the game requests.
In all three instances, Facebook is being used to promote something. Facebook released a statement that said, “Our goal with News Feed has always been to show people the things they want to see.” Facebook is using this rationale to limit posts in which they determine a Page is trying to
Facebook defined promotional posts as follows, after surveying users:
• Posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an application.
• Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context.
• Posts that reuse the exact same content from ads.
However, they will not limit ads. Which means that I will see fewer posts from Pages I have chosen to Like, and more posts from Pages who are paying for me to see their content. How is this “showing me something I want to see?” It’s not. It is just another way for Facebook to monetize the process.