Original Post Date: December 12, 2014
Why Facebook is Failing at Social Media
Recently, Pro Digital Owner Patrick Siewert attended a
networking meeting with some local professionals. The luncheon conversation gravitated toward
online/digital marketing, social media and the reach of different social media
platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook for business purposes. It became painfully apparent through this
conversation that Facebook, the Godfather of social media, is failing at social
media. How could this be? How could the inventor of modern-day social
media now be a fledgling entity in the digital age? We’ll explore some very basic reasons why…
Generational Gaps
Let me tell you a story…
Once upon a time, a couple of conscientious parents decided
to let their 11 year-old son sign up for a Facebook account. They did so knowing full well this violated
Facebook’s terms of service and indeed put many restrictions on the child’s use
of Facebook. The parents told their
child they must be able to access their child’s account fully whenever they
wish to check his activity. He must use
a pseudonym (now also against Facebook policy) to prevent unwanted
contact. He must use an avatar as a
profile picture and have his privacy settings set to the highest level of
security. Finally, he was not allowed to
become ‘friends’ with anyone he didn’t actually know in real life. These seemed to be very basic, very
common-sense rules for a young child in the spirit of responsible parenting and
internet safety.
Several months went by and the child was interested in
connecting with friends and relatives on Facebook, but soon grew bored with
it. He didn’t like that people could tag
him in photographs. He didn’t like the
drama his friends and relatives posted online.
He didn’t care for the role Facebook played in his life. So after a couple of years living with
Facebook, he informed his parents he was canceling and deleting his
account. They were surprised, but not
overly so.
Why did the now-13 year-old decide to cancel his
account? He saw no value in it. Other social media platforms like Instagram
and Twitter provided him with instant, chronological access to the numerous
topics he found interesting and that was good enough for him. Plus, he didn’t like how Facebook became a
part of his identity. Simply put, he
made an informed decision to abandon that online persona and he’s certainly not
alone. Statistics have shown that the
fastest growing segment of new Facebook users are women ages 45-55. Basically, those who have empty-nest syndrome
and they want to keep tabs on their kids and grandkids activities online
without being intrusive into their daily lives.
Facebook has been failing and indeed may have totally failed to keep
their new customers young and fresh.
Eventually, this trend will cause there to be almost no new subscribers
and that does not bode well for the company.
Annoying Algorithms
When I first signed up for Facebook, it was a great way to
see what folks were up to during the day.
It was a chronological listing of friends who wanted to share their
daily activities with others and actually provided a welcome brain-break from a
long work day. Unfortunately over time,
Facebook screwed with that too. Now the
Facebook feed has evolved into a socially-engineered mathematical
computation. Facebook shows you what it thinks it wants you to see. Have you noticed that stories, comments and
status updates, which may have been originally posted days earlier, keep
popping to the top of your feed every time someone you know comments on
it? Have you noticed that some Facebook
friends who don’t post often almost never show up on your feed at all? This is because Facebook, in its failed
attempt to stay “fresh”, has done the exact opposite. The bottom line for me (and indeed most
users) is that we don’t care if Jenny, who checks her Facebook twice a week,
commented on a photo or article that was posted 4 days ago. Its old news and we don’t need or want to see
it. The rest of us have moved on, Facebook. Take the hint! … But they don’t. Like most organizations that get too big and
have a lot of people doing the thinking and not a lot of the DOING, Facebook
has over-thought this one. I can only
imagine the amount of time, effort and money Facebook has put into this
horrible algorithm to try and keep us “informed”, which actually does the exact
opposite. And here’s the irony: That very algorithm that is supposed to keep
Facebook new and fresh is killing one of their newer and bigger revenue
streams… Businesses.
Bad For Business
I started out this article by stating that this subject came
up during a business networking luncheon.
Some of the folks at the meeting didn’t know about Facebook’s lame
algorithm and some just don’t care about Facebook. But recently, I tried using Facebook for
Business to promote Pro Digital
Forensics. Guess what? Because their algorithm is so messed up, my
little businesses page didn’t get much traffic at all! Think about it: Facebook has hundreds of
millions of users, indeed at least tens of millions in the U.S. alone, which is
where I targeted my ad. Do you know how
many “likes” I got to my page? Maybe
10. Yes, I could have paid more and
probably gotten more likes, but this was somewhat of an experiment to see how
effective this tool could be. Guess
what? I’m not going back for a second
round of disappointment.
The bottom line is that Facebook is out-programming and
over-thinking its way out of social media. They alienate their current
customers by creeping into their mobile devices to suggest friends based upon
the contact lists in the device and their mobile app is mediocre at best
(when’s the last time you tried to play a video on the Facebook app?). Add to that the new Facebook trend of making
everything cumbersome with a separate messaging app and perhaps a third
Facebook-associated lingering out there somewhere for businesses, this all
means that they’re pouring more resources into a fledgling entity that will one
day fade away, just like it’s precursor MySpace and several others.
My advice to Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook brain
trust: Get back to basics. Adhere to the K.I.S.S. principle. Start listening to your users and stop
messing with what we want to see.
Twitter is simple, chronological and hasn’t changed a whole lot since it’s
inception. Guess what? It’s better too. The challenge is to create something better
than Twitter, but different at the same time.
There’s enough brain-power in Silicon Valley to figure it out, but you’d
better get to work fast. The younger
generation has all but bailed on you.
Author:
Patrick J.
Siewert
Owner, Lead
Forensic Examiner
Professional
Digital Forensic Consulting, LLC
Based in
Richmond, Virginia
Available
Globally
Ph: 804.588.9877
Web: www.ProDigital4n6.com
