From C/Net:
There are lots of uncertainties about Facebook’s future, but one thing is for sure: CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been busy making big changes.
Earlier this month, he announced a drastic overhaul of the social network’s vaunted news feed. Facebook will soon put more focus on posts from family and friends and less emphasis on content from brands and media outlets. He’s also asking the site’s users to decide what Facebook should consider trusted news sources. Those tweaks, he said, might lead people to spend less time on the site.
Zuckerberg said Wednesday that changes made in the last quarter have already caused many of the service’s 2.13 billion users to spend less time on the platform. All told, users are spending roughly 50 million fewer hours daily on Facebook, he said.
“Let me be clear: Helping people connect is more important than maximizing the time they spend on Facebook,” Zuckerberg told analysts on a conference call.
We won’t know the full effect of the changes on Facebook’s business for a while, but in the meantime, revenue is booming.
. . . .
The earnings results cap off what Zuckerberg called a “hard” year for Facebook. The social network is being blamed for creating “filter bubbles” that warp people’s sense of reality because the site’s influential and mysterious algorithms tend to show Facebook members content they already agree with.
. . . .
Earlier this week, Zuckerberg said Facebook would now push stories from local news outlets because national news tends to be more polarizing.
“Now, I want to be clear: By making these changes, I expect the time people spend on Facebook and some measures of engagement will go down,” he wrote Jan. 12 in a Facebook post outlining the shift toward content from family and friends. “But I also expect the time you do spend on Facebook will be more valuable. And if we do the right thing, I believe that will be good for our community and our business over the long term too.”
Link to the rest at C/Net and thanks to Felix for the tip.
PG has substantially cut down the amount of time he spends on Facebook because of the reduced number of items he’s seen from family and friends. He doesn’t see his time spent with FB increasing anytime soon. Right now, he’s off the first time he sees any third-party info.
Perhaps I have heard one too many politicians use the phrase, but “Let me be clear” sets off all sorts of internal warnings that obfuscation and side-stepping are likely to follow.
Much as you hearing the guy/gal before the judge start their statement with ‘honestly’ or ‘truthfully’ – you know what’s coming next most likely isn’t.
What caught my eye was the shift towards local news and communication. Distancing themselves from big media is wise.
A good way to make sure they keep on raking it in.
This is probably the result of research on human emotional response to presentation. That is, the measurement of “engagement” in advertising has been crudely measured in time spent viewing the ad; Facebook probably has research that ads for products served in association with content that makes people angry and anxious may raise the “time spent” metric but creates negative attitudes towards brands. If this becomes a new paradigm within the ad industry, it would certainly change television as advertisers begin to demand that their ads be shown in association with positive content.
I’ve always hated the Facebook feed ever since it stopped being something I as a user could control (only what I follow, in reverse chrono order). I don’t use it so I’m not up to date on how customizable is the feed now.
Youtube got smacked pretty hard by advertisers upset by the videos their ads were associated with.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/googles-youtube-losing-major-advertisers-213144886.html
“Bubblizing” is a good thing for FaceBook, when they tie that into the advertising that is served. Apparently, that is exactly what they are doing. Revenues would not be going up if the people who actually pay for their product were not seeing an increased value in it.
Niche marketing does have its pitfalls, though. The major one is serving an ever-narrowing niche or set of niches. There are indications that the niches that Zuckerberg is serving have peaked, and are now in decline. Interesting times…
Facebook is still raking it in because advertisers still can’t figure out what sells where or why. Once companies stop paying advertisers to waste their money facebonk and all those other places that only have ‘eyes’ to sell will drop like stones.
I only spend time on FB reading some groups of interest to me. For some reason, people would rather deal with FB than start a message board, which I prefer to use. But, as much as I’d rather be on a normal forum, I go where the people and things I want to converse with and about are hanging out.
I know I’m an odd duck, but I don’t even look at my own FB page. I don’t care what people are posting, what they’re doing, the latest meme they want to share. Yawn. If it’s something important, they can email me.
Don’t everyone die of shock. ;P
I go to FB maybe once a month–if that. And it’s not to do the typical FB things. I go there . . . Well, I don’t really know why I go there. I just don’t care about FB. If I want to chat with any of my FB friends, I have Trillian, which has access to my FB account, and I use the IM app for chatting with them so I don’t have to to see all that nonsense on FB.
I find social media hopelessly addictive, I wish I could have only gone once a month. Instead of 10 times a day. I wish I didn’t get all wrapped up in social media drama.
But that’s not my reality, so I dropped all of it.
I hear nowadays that Facebook is where you go ‘to talk with your parents and grandparents.’ But all the happening stuff is elsewhere, where your parents aren’t.
If that’s not the death knell, I don’t know what is.