The End Of Organic Reach = The End Of Facebook?

author imageLauren Riley Last updated:

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  • I have experienced this more and more over the past month where my organic reach went from the hundreds down to the single digit. I understand to concept of wanting businesses to pay to promote their adds but when you’re a blogger and don’t get paid to promote it’s a real turn off and makes me consider leaving Facebook altogether.

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    • I have had the same experience with Facebook. The last 5 posts I’ve done in the last few weeks were all in the single digits. It’s very disappointing.
      Also, in the beginning when my page was new, I paid to get likes and boost my posts and the results were terrible. I never even thought about paying for any of that again on Facebook. So not worth it!

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    • Exactly! It’s one thing if you want to charge Target or Macy’s to share their posts, they can afford it. I am also a blogger. I made exactly $0.00 last year from blogging. Yet on several occasions I paid $5-$10 to get a single post “boosted” so that my followers would actually see it. I am also seriously thinking of ditching Facebook but I still have so much to learn about how to use Google+.

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  • This has had a huge impact on my small business. I have worked tirelessly to build up 12,000 likers that no longer see anything. Customers complain that they are missing items, but there is little I can do. I reply on opportunistic sales that happen when fans see an item in their newsfeed. That has now gone, I have no problem with paying for ad’s and do regularly but unless you are spending £100’s of pounds it’s not enough! Very very disappointing FB!

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    • This is one of the worst issues Katie. The fact that people like your page because they want to see your content and now they can’t even do that! Why punish the fans?!

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  • This has had a massive impact on my business too. I’ve invested heavily in Facebook over the years both in content and paid media but now it’s no longer a viable channel. Moving focus to Twitter, G+, LinkedIn etc. PBrands need to realise it’s not worth the investment anymore.

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  • I’ve worked really hard to get to 6,000+ likes for my clothing companies page and it used to be our best way of driving sales. I’ve noticed that particularly if I post more than once in a day the reach plummets! Posted 4 times over a day the other day and the reach went approximately 1,000, 500, 180, 3. 3 people out of over 6 thousand saw my last post of the day! Absolutely gutting. I’ve never paid for an ad and I hear from those that do that they aren’t even convinced it’s working or they get told they can’t post a picture because there’s too much text in it, when there was only about 4 words!

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    • I am the owner of Jedi Knight Academy , I have bled to get the page where it is ! We hit 20k likes in sept. We hit 200k a few weeks ago ! And I woke up one day and it was gone , my reach my likes and everything declined to almost nothing over a week period , I have been forced to pay , which I must if I want my page to have any reach . It is what it is , we were growing at 2k to 3k per day without paying for one like ! I guess that just isn’t going to happen anymore . Chris Cox is the name associated with all this . Everyone say Thanks Chriss!

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  • And this is why I continue to only invest my time into Google+. From day 1 I’ve maintained 50x more people following and engaging with content. There are people on other networks who don’t need to be forced into “likes.” In the end, they “like” you and? Because a commercial told them to? A friend sent them an invite? Does that actually mean anything unless they use the content? NOPE. G+ has never let me down which is why I’ve decided to not waste my time with a platform that just wants money. Guess what Facebook: so do I. And I’m not getting any. Neither are you.

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  • Much of social media has turned into a mire of corporate parasitism. They hoover up your content for free. They lie about their hoover making your access free. They then put their hand in your pocket and rifle through. G+, FB, LinkedIn, Twitter – not sure any of them are anything more than corporations circle jerking financed by everyone else.

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  • Doesent suprise me at all…greed as usual ! What started out being a great networking site for friends, musicians etc has or will disapear up its own a*** like many other greedy ba******.
    we need a new site that is back to basics and music friendly too. As music is an entire mode of people socialising on itself.

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  • I have over 3000 likers and am gutted that sales have plummeted. i have anounced on my page i will be closing after christmas. i cannot afford the extortionate advertising fee to reach a few people. when fans like your page so they can see your posts they should be able to see your posts. they make enough money from all the games and apps they do. facebook was always free for the public as a whole and now they are punishing those who are trying to make ends meet and make a living. i wonder if they remember when they first started out how hard life was. did they ever get a bum wrap and remember how they felt?

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    • That’s awful Shelby – and a great point about Facebook forgetting where they started.

      I bet Zuckerberg would have been mortified to think he’d be doing this now when he was sitting in his dorm room all those years ago.

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  • I find running Facebook Company Pages an unrewarding experience. They will still have their place, especially if you are willing to pay for reach, but they should always be part of a wider social network portfolio, and not the sole basis of a business model.

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    • Exactly. Most of these “small businesses” are nothing more than hobbies really. Hence their dependence on one social networking site.

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  • I absolutely agree with everything! They are forcing people to pay for boosting to those who already Liked their page…all I can say is goodbye FB, hello google+!!

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  • Come On FaceBook…give us a break. You have small businesses (inc mine) by the balls by charging us to use your page. Whats the matter Zuckerburg doesnt have enough money!!!
    FB should be free unless you want to pay to have your ads on there. Its the best Social Network around for networking and I cant thank you for allowing me to use it to better my very small business during these super hard economic times. Ant extra money I get from my business goes to my meager lifestyle. I cannot afford to advertise period and FB has been my constant as I can imagine it has been for many other small businesses.
    Stay user friendly and help your fellow humans out and think about when you were the struggling small guy!

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    • I thought that this whole thing may be connected to the stock market. Now that facebook gets money from other people, it needs to do something to increase its overall budget to be able to pay its shareholders their dividend and to make them invest even more money in facebook.
      I don’t know how much impact the shareholders have on the whole business strategy in this case, but in my opinion this could be one of the reasons for the whole “pay for your posts”-thing.

      What do you guys think about it?

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    • This is really a reply to Sebastian, below. I figured it was worth pointing out that he hasn’t a clue about how Facebook the stock works, considering he doesn’t even know that it DOESN’T pay a dividend. And what’s with this need to ‘increase the budget’? Budget for what? Did you mean perhaps to say ‘income’, ‘revenue’, or ‘profit’?

      You bet shareholders are responsible for the drive to monetise facebook. They’re a public company, and they’re accountable for that. Fact: Zuckerburg never wanted the company to go public. He was essentially forced to by the SEC because of the number of independent investors and funds who had financed the company to get it to that point. Once you reach a certain number of investors, be they companies, partnerships, or individuals, the SEC is going to start pressuring to make your company public, so that it can be accountable to a public accounting and transparency standard.

      Mistakes were made, because too many investors owned too much of Facebook before it hit the stock market. If Zuckerburg had been more careful initially, he likely could have stalled on an IPO much longer than the company did.

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  • as a small business i can not afford to advertise to be seen! and this does not produce sales as i have tried it in the past it mostly gets my items seen by people not really wanting to see my page whereas my regular customers who would like to see are not!! if this is how it is going to be i will be looking for a alternative platform to sell from

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  • I have my own page on facebook that, unlike many of the people posting here, hasn’t broken even 1k likes. Granted I’m not looking to sell clothing or the like but I do try and generate some business for photo shoots through facebook and seeing my reach dropping steadily kills any chance of that. I’m unsure if I’ll continue to do anything with my page other than but up convention pictures for people to see until I can setup my own website to load pictures onto. The inability to reach new people means that I’m basically stuck with hoping that my current fans will tell other people to check my page out or those that I meet at conventions will come and have a look. Either way though they wont be seeing my content soon so it makes me question if I should even bother posting it there.

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  • Facebook is within their rights, but it’s greedy and they’re going to lose a TON of their users. This is going to hurt the blogging community tremendously, which makes up a huge part of Facebook. Social media has been molded into the best place for free advertising and the fact that Facebook is trying to take that away to benefit themselves just shows they’re greedy and lacking creativity.

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  • i can understand, the want money for my business … ok
    but i am not gonna watch selfstarting videos
    no way ever
    good bye facebook if this starts, even my private account will be left alone then

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  • they’re well within their rights to conduct business however they wish. and we’re well within our rights to stop giving them business because they’re bad at it.

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  • This idea would have gone over a lot better had they simply started charging businesses from the beginning, as folks would have been able to decide how much time and money to invest in the platform. Free is nice, and lots of people signed up because of that, but monetizing it now seems like a bait-and-switch. I’d have paid before, but I will not pay now, especially as FB does not reach my target audience anyway.

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  • As an admin of a few large pages, one over 150K & one close to 100K I have watched them walk this down since June 2012. The biggest problem with switching networks is that FB is where the people are, at least in our business. The biggest issue I have with FB is that they were very devious about this practice. They allowed us to come her from Myspace and sit and watch us make them the biggest in the world and when the build was done they pulled the rug out from under us. I’ll be clear here too, we have bigger numbers so we get some traffic but we are concerned about the smaller pages, the bands that have 1,000 or 1,500 that no longer get to see what came to see when they liked the page.
    Honestly I don’t know what the answer is but we have built our other sites up although they account for a small fraction of traffic and I’d venture to guess it’s the same for everyone.
    In our case even though we are the largest publication in the world in our music genre it still won’t be enough for Facebook to consider us “High Quality Content”…which is what Facebook says they are going to provide. My prediction is you will see more and more sites like Rolling Stone and Spin and any number of major corporate entities, much like you get on commercial radio. What was once a very awesome platform has turned into a joke and for a lot of our friends that rely on social media for their small businesses this joke isn’t funny.

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  • You are all experiencing the same thing with your FB pages that Google did to the “real” internet a couple years ago. There is currently NO real organic audience available via the web. Both the creator & the user are being screwed by the networks in between. I really have no problem with ads other than the usual… but the manipulation of our access to what’s really out there on an individual level is really a problem. It’s been terrible for my business and allowed others to make big bucks pirating my material while my own pages sink further & further from their former glory. I opened my site in 1999. Facebook means nothing to me but Google was able to change my whole life literally over-night. It took years to recover. Untold numbers of other life-long artisans & small business owners such as myself were destroyed in one massive wave & the world hardly noticed. This is the same story on a much smaller scale & it’s probably just the beginning. 1st world problems…

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  • As an admin of a simple community page that does not represent a business, this just makes it difficult to run a page for fun. Its not like you make any money off of a community page, so paying to advertise a community is pointless. Not like you can just be like, “Oh in order to join this community you have to pay a membership fee,” to our 8,000 fans. So if you dont pay for it, your community never grows. This basically throws a wrench into all the hard work me and the other dozens of popular community admins have put in to build our reputations(Some of our community pages have over 40K-100K fans).

    …and thats what it’s about in the community pages. You start from nothing without paying for anything and solely build your page by putting yourself out there. Paying for advertisement ruins the fun and diverts anyone from starting a new page because they would NOW have to pay for it to reach anyone…whereas a year ago you wouldn’t have to.

    So, thank you, you f*ckers. You’ve somehow managed to not only f*ck over business owners, but thousands and thousands of others who run pages as a hobby and use them to interact with their fans. Really appreciate it.

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    • Oh, I unfortunately know the feeling. I only recently broke 1k likes myself, and while I’m lucky I have a core of good fans, I know that very few see anything I post. Now granted I didn’t expect to break 200, but that’s beside the point. It’s just utterly ridiculous as I love to interact with my fans, but shortly after liking they end up losing me. To be honest, my reach has been rather stagnant as my likes increased, which is proof enough that they are continuously throttling back all pages who don’t pay, and even making it so you have to pay more and more to get the same reach you would normally get.

      It REALLY makes me wary, and if I didn’t have people I know in real life on Facebook, I would have jumped ship long ago when everything started to get fishy. Now it’s just nothing but greed covered in honey that is forcefed to everyone.

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  • i have worked hard to get my samll business up and running we cant afford shops and the best place to run your small business is through facebook the goverment arnt doing enough to help elther .

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  • Interesting article. My facebook profile was a successful in producing photographic work and results showed in the amount of facebook likes and comments. My profile was forced to become a facebook page. My reach was extremely limited. I could tell because I went x amount of likes to enough that I could count with my hands. It was shocking. Facebook realised I was benefiting from my profile, turned me into a like page and then expect me to pay so I can produce a fraction of my reach. I remember when facebook set the standard to not produce ads. Now look at them, it’s disgusting.

    The worst part about it is we all need facebook, it’s how we all connect. It would be good to start all over on another platform, even try out google+ if haven’t already, but you would have to build that network up again and that’s a big investment on its own.

    We are indeed a society which conforms. There’s always a big tif when facebook changes its layout and people threaten to leave and whatnot, but guess what, they don’t. And it’s like this new system with ads. We will hate them, but we will get over it and move on and probably use this service to publish our own ads if we really have to. it’s sad but it’s true. Just wait till they do something even more terrible.

    The next big social media platform will come along, knock us off our feet, claim to be free for the most part, develop into a huge company and then find ways to milk us. This is the cycle.

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  • I have been reading everyone’s comments about FB, I run an events planning and management company so I have relied on FB to get stall bookings, find musicians and promote the events in question. I have never got over a 1000 likes, I too have seen my audience decline, so now feel their is no alternative but to look for other methods. I have always said FB is not the holy grail. I set my website up this week and I have made a page to promote other events and promote small businesses. I was recommended linkedin and I am on it but unfortunately I haven’t adjusted too well but I will. I will also look at the others mentioned too as well as Stallfinder. It probably won’t be long till not just small businesses have to pay but also “Joe public” to use Facebook. Wishing you all the luck with your business’s, like stated thereate other methods. Xx

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  • I suppose its a fact that people expect for free. But tbh i believe FB already has market share for ads. Where its cheaper to pay FB to advertise for your business and more effective now than Google. FB will use your information on your page to target adverts relevant to your interests. I mean i am even starting to see Jobsite adverts on there with key tangiable jobs i have been applying for!
    However i feel it needs to continue allowing businesses to grow organic. I dont think companies who get good response organically would begrudge spending a few pounds on advertising.
    That said my heart has dropped where several pages i have used to get good responses to my posts, now don’t. This could be the start of demise of FB and Google + and the like taking the audience.

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  • As the creator and main admin of FIVE very large firefighter pages, I am angry! My fans, from 8000 to 250,000 on each page WANT to see our content and information, they signed up for it and WANT it. Now, Facebook says that I must pay seems like a violation of our agreement/contract and a slap in the face of organizations like ours!

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  • And what’s even worse, when you pay to promote your post, it doesn’t seem to reach the people that like your page. I get very random likes when I do that, from people in other countries that don’t seem to really be interested in the post. I might actually pay if I knew it did any good.

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  • Facebook is dying, anyway. People are spending less and less time on that platform for many reasons. More people spend the time they once did on Facebook on Instagram and Twitter. I don’t rely on Facebook for my business but I can understand the frustrations expressed here. The social media model is ever changing. Facebook has recently failed to evolve. Simply put, Facebook has become a boring experience.

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  • I can understand the frustrations some people may have, especially if you’ve invested (time/money) building those likes. The problem is, and this is nothing new.. 80% of their ad revenue will be coming from large companies with advertising budgets to suit – it’s their commerical target! However – I doubt FB will isolate us in the long term. There is a very simple solution and i dont think it’ll be long until it’s put into place by FBHQ. A new/extra feature when you “like” a page – “subsribe to FBPAGE newsletter – voila – its a double optin, which will actually help the small busineses and not affect the larger businesses (i know myself and just because I “like” Coca Cola, UEFA, UNITED NATIONS i dont actually want to hear from them – my like is more of an indication of appreciation.. However – when i “like” my local council, local artist, School Alumni etc – I am interested in hearing those updates and would happily sign up to the page :) – i think in this model – the large companies would still need to pay to actually maintain organic reach! And therefore everyone is still happy.. users see content they double-optin to see, small businesses/freelancers and keep users up to date, and large organisations can still use up their end of quarter marketing budgets :D

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  • i can’t believe so much time here so many good friends and today on my page 1st birthday i do notice that things are changing :( don’t want to leave don’t want to quiet but fb adds was a crazy idea why would people have to pay for now profit pages?

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  • Maybe with these changes Facebook can go back to social network instead of a business page. I endorse these changes.

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  • BOO HOO, don’t cry.. when I like a business it is because it is interesting, helpful, or just owned by a friend. Who really wants to see 4 ads/day from your business. CONSOLIDATE. If you want free advertisement go shout from the street corner. I have no problem with facebook charging you all for taking up screen space. IF someone wants 6 updates a day from you, then perhaps you should just buy your own website and direct your clients there…

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    • Exactly. There are a few business websites I visit AT LEAST once a day to see what’s changed – and I consider that behavior abnormal and look forward to easing off maybe someday. I do not want a business force feeding me through fb or fb will be one of those sites I ease off of.

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  • By allowing obnoxious words Facebook is losing out.
    I find more and more people say that the sort who Facebook only contribute to its downfall, the great stuff is outnumbered by the low stuff. Such sites as the ‘so called Irish Jokes” only help to further dumb down a society already in the gutter.

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  • I own and run a small chain of supplement stores in Australia, we currently have 62.7k Likes on our Facebook page that used to grow by 100 likes a day (organically) over the last 6 weeks it became blatantly obvious my reach was getting tampered with, having some videos we posted go viral with 150k+ reach to literally 26 people.. 26 people from 62,700… At the end of the day if you click “LIKE” on a page with the intentions of being able to subscribe to that pages posts from your newsfeed, and now you can’t, I can only see this as a violation of your rights on facebook.

    As a owner among millions of other SME’s a hate to say it but it’s looking like the beginning of the end for Business opportunities on FB. IG is by far better at exposure, most photos tha tI post now on our FB page get between 20-150likes where as on Instagram (with only 25.7K followers) get upwards of 1,000 likes!

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  • I help run a page for a not-for-profit organisation; it has just over 4,000 fans. Our overall views/reach stats have not really changed at all since this story broke a few weeks ago; our numbers are up a bit on ‘plain text’ posts, and down a bit on posts with embedded content (images, links, etc). Basically, the less spammy a post is, the more of our page viewers see it – and in fact, often more than did a few months ago.

    Mind you, we don’t post memes, competitions, or other pseudo-viral content, or any other ‘tricks’ to get better figures. We just use our page to talk to our fans, and give them info about our events and other stuff they’re interested in.

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  • What drives me nuts as a user is that I like companies in order to see these posts- and not only do I not see them, but I see posts from brands I want nothing to do with because one of my friends liked or commented on their stuff, and that other business is paying. So unbelievably annoying, since I tend to follow small businesses and indie bands who are not going to have the money to waste on facebook.

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    • Agree totally Pam. I also find it invasion of privacy a little when you see what your “friend” has written on some large supermkt chainstore page or other-I’m not sure they want all their 456 friends to see what they wrote without their permission. Sure if they went to the chainstore’s site and inadvertently saw it, but not targeted to friends the way it is.
      And it is only big business that will be able to pay for this new FB world-so it will be like watching the TV. The small businesses don’t have the money and nor do the charity groups and interest groups…who really need it.
      Also why does FB call them ads? They are not necessarily. I tried to get information out to our customers about Christmas closing times–necessary info–FB did not permit the ad because they said word content was over 20%. (who even cares if we’re paying for it??) They could’ve told me before I posted it! And then had the audacity to charge me for the clicks before they disapproved it!-about 2 hrs worth! I got around it by changing the profile picture with the info on it and have now had more likes on it than I got for the last “ad” I paid for with FB!!
      The funny weird thing is when I look at stats..I have significantly more likes on this new picture than FB tells me the number of people who saw it!! How ridiculous is that and there’s obviously something strange going on there behind FB’s doors. Need to explore other options that’s for sure–all the years I’ve spent building two facebook vintage business pages as a volunteer–sitting on my bum getting unhealthy and now they slap me around as well! Thinking might have to pay for real ads–not giving FB the money–and it might cost more but will target the right people-I really can’t trust what FB does anymore.

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  • My frustration with FB is reaching epic nights. Two things on a marketing and business use front strike as bing ridiculous and grabby.
    1. I did decide on a Facebook ad and it was waste. It on stanly reset itself for a ‘time’ not a budget limit as I had instructed. Before long, not only had I gone beyond budget but the like increased by a tiny few. I found that a number of hits were past volunteers. The lied, it charged, they didn’t like. My money gone I cancelled the ad.
    2. I have release for every actor, performer and entertainer involved with us and we are a public event with public awareness of photo use. Randomly (well… Around Christmas and any time we need to promote or show success) photos get deleted and FB’s automatic system blocks me from bing able to continue to promote. Every Christmas I get blocked so badly, if I don’t get the season’s Greetings card up by mid November I can’t and now FB has unpublished m page until a human can look at it and decide if it should be deleted. Every time this happens I waste time and energy over explaining tat I have permission and tat the patterns point o a cyber bully not a legit claim. The easy access to methods that provide for cyber bullying is insane. I’ve even seen the same thing happen to friends who divorce or got fired from a job. In the case of images and videos, companies should be permitted to be responsible or their own legal issues. If FB wants to play law they should investigate immediately instead of leaving it to a machine who instantly interferes with your promotion.

    Thank you.

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  • Good god this is ignorant and kneejerk ‘journalism’. You do not have to pay to have your fans get you in their news feed, they just have to like AND follow you. As for the first chunk of your article, do you know how social networking works? If so, this should not be surprising to you. tons of people spamming likes and shares equals your messages being a smaller percentage of the total content being spammed. its a really simple concept, and will apply to ANY social network that gets more popular, and more usage per user.

    Also I am enjoying the recent change where you can unfollow to stop a page or person from flooding your newsfeed. Also the algorithm that analyzes the posts that you ‘i dont want to see this’ is what is affecting whether or not everyone that is following sees it. ive noticed it doing its job. a page that is for a specific thing starts blasting irrelevant/offtopic garbage that gets ‘i dont want to see this’ its going to block other similar posts from being put in my feed. fantastic.

    these are actually good changes that you are taking a dump on. if a page spams too much, or constantly posts offtopic, people can still be a fan by liking, but not following or at least only getting the updates that they are interested in.

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    • This isn’t ignorant journalism at all when Facebook are the ones admitting the decrease in organic reach in order to get more people to pay for ads. I think you are missing the point of the article.

      Yes, I do know how social networking works thank you very much. The fact of the matter is, that despite content being of a high-quality and relevant (not the “off-topic garbage” that you seem to asssume everyone is posting bar yourself), it is reaching a very small percentage of the majority of business page’s fans through no fault of the page owner themselves.

      You only have to look at the 69 comments on this page and the 15.2K Facebook shares and 582 tweets to know this is the case.

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  • The real issue is that fb has gone from meaninful content and social interaction to just a bunch of ads. People used to like pages to see their content. Now they don’t get to see it and instead see unwanted advertising. Early fb worked well to create a grassroots small business movement and instead of cultivating that, fb became too greedy and pushed everyone but the heavyweights out.

    Businesses invested in side ads to gain more likers because that extended their reach. Now they have to pay twice- once to get the likes and then to reach the likes they’ve already paid fb to ‘help’ them get. If fb wanted to cap the number of likers on a business page and then ask people to pay to expand it, that would be one thing -still not ideal, but the idea would be that as people were reaching more fans they would be able to build up that base and increase revenue to then invest in expansion. Instead, fb built a dam with their rules and want people to pay with the water they no longer have access to.

    Facebook needs to change things back somehow, or people are going to start jumping ship- not just the businesses but the likers who are not seeing the content they really want.

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  • I can’t believe not one person is realizing how ridiculous all this whining is. I completely agree that Facebook has a lot to figure out in terms of the technical aspect of ensuring biz ad targeting is accurate ad effective. It is pretty obvious to me they are working on that. In the meantime, what right do we have to expect one of the world’s most ubiquitous an accessible websites to continue letting us advertise, share our work and promotions, and most importantly, directly interact with your target market on a 1:1 basis. Where else are you going to do that? G+, really? Because all your targets are there, right? And Google won’t monetize that when they are? Please. A successful business, no matter how small, should be investing in marketing and advertising. Period. If FB isn’t worth it to you, then spend your money where you feel it is. And if FB ads haven’t been effective for you, maybe it’s not fb, maybe it’s you. Maybe you should invest in some marketing help or education about effective and relevant marketing. This is a new marketing paradigm and fb is trying to figure it out. Do you give your products and services away for free?

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  • This is merely Zuckerberg’s attempt to recoup the loss of $$ from his miserably failed IPO and continued stock decline. I have not paid for a post and I never will!

    My problem is, I can’t figure out how to get G+ to work…*sighs* Guess I’m going to have to start relying on my blog instead of FB…*grumbles*

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    • Blogging trumps social media anyways. Blogging is great.

      Keep trying with G+ is gaining traction and well its Google!

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  • You seem to think the general user wants to “engage” with small brands that they like on a constant basis. In reality they generally don’t. They want to know what their friends are up to. If brands are filling their news feed with their engagement content people will lose interest in Facebook.

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  • Its no longer social media. Its an ad platform you can socialize on. Its for big business.

    I dumped my page. Im even sick of my personal page with all the ads in my feed!! People are becoming groomed to ignore ads on Facebook.

    Google+ is gaining huge traction.

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  • Google is 10 times worse, and their annoying ads run across the internet using your personal browsing data to fuel sales. Buying competing companies, only to shut them down and steal their talent.

    Facebook has to make money, how else are they going to pay for all of the resources it takes to keep 1.1 billion active users sharing every last idiotic thought and photograph. Nothing in life is free guys.

    Let’s hope that there are more independent companies chiseling away at Google’s monopolized market share.

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  • I’ve changed over to Google+ not getting any fans yet but hoping that will change. I’m loosing a great deal of money just to reach my fans I already have on fb and while yes it reached a good paid audience, I just can’t afford to keep doing that.

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  • See i think you are reading this wrong. If they are saying your ads are going to be getting cut down and a reduced share then that’s fine. no one wants to hear your ads and if they are stoked about your ads then they should be more than fine with opting in for a newsletter or special offer list which you can run for dirt cheap with mailchimp.Personally if your ads are what you consider content your wrong… Companies sell software for fifty bucks that people buiy just to stop ads. I think you will see Facebooks reach increase. The issue you have here is there are no competitors in this space. if you think linked in is a viable alternative to facebook, then you need to hire a professional. The reality of it is this, they are going to start doing the same thing as Google. their purpose is not to further your business but get the things people are after in front of their eyeballs, and if they continue to do this people will continue to place eyeballs on those pages. End of story. Stop advertising and start producing powerful content about your business and compelling reasons to encourage interactions with you and you will see your brand grow. I haven’t seen a drop in anything. In fact i have seen an increase. But then again i also know how to market businesses without ads. Those are my two cents.

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    • The page I work on is 90% meaningful, high-quality content and 10% promotion. Yet I see a drop in reach, NOT engagement, through no fault of my own. I am very well-versed in marketing businesses without the need for ads, but when Facebook makes it so unless you pay for ads you won’t reach your existing fans, that goes beyond a joke. That’s my two cents.

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  • It is and has always been a big mistake to build a business on the good will of only one big company. As long as one uses Facebook, Facebook is making the rules. It is more wisely, to see Facebook as a good add on, and as a necessary kind of good standard. But it is simply not a webhoster or an all-in-one marketing solution.

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  • It’s a travesty and a blatant money gouging effort on the part of Facebook. I worked so hard over 10 months to build up over 11,000 followers and bring literally tons of people to Facebook via other social media and to my page.
    I guess the old “Facebook will always be free” motto is long lost in a trail of millions of dollars and sad business tactics.

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  • I find that posting something on my page, and then sharing it through my personal account gets me more exposure. So that’s what I’m doing since I never managed to get as many likes on my business page as I wanted … maybe it is time to shift to G+, though.

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  • I noticed a lot of my favorite pages are no longer showing up on my newsfeed. So no surprised my business pages is not doing well at all. the pages i’m talking about have over 50k likes and are active. I post once or twice a day and my post view counts only show one view….i’m not giving facebook any money!!

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  • Amazing arrogance and disregard for Facebook business users. In five years, wouldn’t be surpised if FB is the new MySpace.

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  • I own a play cafe and my primary target audience is Moms with young children and they are on fb in droves. Part of my early success is they were easy to reach via fb, word spread about my business and I quickly garnered many fans. Now customers get mad because they didn’t know we closed early on new year’s eve (even though I posted several times on fb on the weeks prior) as fb isn’t showing my message to everyone. I send out emails on occasion but they take more time for me to create and so does my website to update. FB is easy but now that my messages aren’t being seen all of my 3700 fans, what can I do? Moms don’t use Google + or twitter as much =(

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  • You forget the basic premise of community, quality of quantity. Interaction is the currency of the community manager.

    Don’t stop creating great content. Ever.

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  • I don’t like it, but I understand it. I mean, if you want to advertise your business you have to pay. We all had free advertising on Facebook for years and that was AWESOME, but you can’t blame Facebook for trying to make money like any other place that sells advertising space. Radio doesn’t give free ads, billboards don’t, news papers don’t either. I do wish they kept the organic views a little higher than they are, but I have no problem spending a few dollars to advertise particular events for my business. There is also a way for the people who like your page to see almost all of your post. They have to go into the settings and click on what they want to see from you. Its just a lot of extra steps that most followers will not do, but it is an option.

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  • I’ve got three different fan pages on FB and I’m now looking elsewhere for marketing. I absolutely refuse to pay for ads to get my fans to see my posts. I worked hard to accumulate them. Here’s the real rub for me- You advertise to get fans and then FB turns around and says you have to keep paying for ads if you want to be seen by them. As a small business owner I can tell you right now that’s just not in the budget. FB is being incredibly short sighted. Half of why people come to FB is for entertainment, which includes seeing posts from pages that they have liked. When they stop seeing posts from those pages they will start going elsewhere. I feel like FB did a real bait and switch on all the page owners. Shame on you FB and hello Pinterest and Google+ and all the other social media outlets. We don’t need you FB. Soon you’ll realize that you need us more.

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  • Great article. This has been going on for a long time. Social media has always been a house of cards. “Friends” are not fans and don’t equate to sales. Then when the social media changes their policies or experiences a drop like MySpace then you’re screwed. Content is what matters. Buying “popularity” in the form of boosting your social network is not a shortcut.

    0 social network friends / likes / whatever = You earn $0.
    1,000,000 social network friend / likes / whatever = You earn $0.

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  • I feel like I’m the only one who is the capitalist here.

    We too have a Facebook page that we worked hard to get 17,000+ like for and now our reach is cut. But the reality is a business, ANY business – yes even Facebook – owes it to it’s employees & shareholders to derive revenue out of where they are providing the most value.

    Facebook realized that businesses like us were generating value, in some cases significant value, from using THEIR platform to promote goods & services. Facebook was providing this service 100% for free to us. We didn’t pay Facebook anything for this reach. Sure, they tried to place ads on the side, but that wasn’t working well enough and besides it was a bit of a round about way of monetizing.

    So they turned to charging the people like us that were actually receiving value. That seems reasonable to me.

    This is the nature of business – things, especially marketing channels – change. For everyone saying that they will move to other social media channels, trust me: They too will try to make money from YOUR business/hobby/organization that is trying to market to people. Maybe not this month or this year, but it will happen. And then you’ll be faced with another choice.

    The only thing I think that would have been a smart move by FB was scaling the reach cut: It should have had a greater affect those who can pay more. Just like student pricing at the movies.

    Incidentally, we HAVE experienced that if we create content that people share, our reach is still there. It the self-serving, advertisement content that people DON’T share thats been cut.

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    • It’s seems you’re a typical capitalist in that you can only see things as they affect you. What about an artist, such as myself who does not capitalise on their artwork but simply wants fans to be able to see it because they clicked like and presumably would want to see what I create? I guess my needs don’t matter as long as you’re making money through right?

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  • Facebook have neglected to consider many pages that serve people for free. Often charitable organisations or people who generally just want to support others voluntarily because they like to inspire and motivate people. I share inspirational quotes and blog posts, all of my content is free. Now I am lucky if over 1000+ of my followers 7 people see a post. I schedule to facebook but I am now posting less there because of this and focusing now on Google+ and Twitter, this is where I get great connections. But what a shame to the 1000+ followers who loved receiving my uplifting content. They now never get to see them. And even adding a page to notifications does not guarantee facebook will tell you when a page posts. So to me Facebook has shot themselves in the foot well and truly. Eventually even paying pages are going to be peed off because competition for feed will be so huge costs will have to go up, so what are they going to do then?

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  • Greed. Pure and simple. Helping the rich get richer. Capitalism… helping the elite since the dawn of money.

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  • This has completely decimated the non-profit fanpage I’ve built over the last two years. We have over 38,000 likes but only a few hundred see our posts anymore. We are NOT a business and can’t afford to advertise. I hope that Facebook wakes up to the big mistake they’ve made.

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