[LINK] Facebook: here comes the bill

[Jan Whitaker]

How not to win friends: Facebook sneaks in fees to promote posts

Asher Moses
Published: October 31, 2012 - 3:23PM

Facebook is being accused of an underhanded bait and switch, with 
brands and even personal users now forced to pay for "promoted posts" 
to reach all of their "likers" and friends.

Evidence suggests that the algorithm that determines which posts 
appear in your News Feed, called EdgeRank, has been tweaked so that 
posts are visible for under 15 per cent of your connections unless you pay.

For individuals the cost to promote a status update is $US7.20 
($A6.95) and for brands the cost depends on how many fans or "likers" 
they have, but is around $US20 ($A19.30) per post to reach 3000 fans 
and $US200 ($A193) to reach 50,000 fans.

Catherine Cincotta, 33, from Melbourne, runs hair accessory firm 
Dazzle Strands, which has about 4000 likes on Facebook.

"I was getting at least 800 to 1000 post views and then July hit and 
then all of a sudden it started going progressively down so I was 
starting to see 300, 200 and now it's at about 90 on average," she said.

"I find this to be underhanded ... all of a sudden the posts are 
being suppressed and you're getting bombarded with requests to 
advertise with them."

[snip the middle]

The response from readers was mostly negative with most complaining 
that they shouldn't have to pay in order for their posts to be 
visible by their friends.

"So tell me, how are people meant to engage with the content if 
they're not being shown the content in the first place?" wrote one.

Another said: "I have to tell you the vast majority of my friends 
really hate this, find it very frustrating, and the only thing that 
keeps them from leaving Facebook is all their friends are here and 
there is no real option ... yet."

Facebook declined to comment for this story.

This story was found at: 
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/how-not-to-win-friends-facebook-sneaks-in-fees-to-promote-posts-20121031-28j9r.html 




Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

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~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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