Tag Archives: digital media

August 1, 2018 · 11:58 am

Facebook Adds Friction

If you’ve been led to this post via my Facebook profile, welcome. It wasn’t as easy as usual to get you here and I’ll explain why in a moment. The circumstances for that raise a good business question, though, and that’s what I want us to think about today.

I received an email from WordPress the other day. The screed is published on the WordPress platform, as are thousands of other sites. When I write a new post, it appears on my site as well as on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Those are decent sources of traffic for me and even if readers don’t click through to the source I can impart my thoughts via those other platforms to a certain extent.

Back to the email. WordPress notified me that as of today, August 1, 2018, a change to Facebook’s API means that third-party tools can no longer share posts automatically to Facebook Profiles. This includes Publicize, the tool that connects my site to major social media platforms like Facebook. Obviously, I can still do the posting to my own profile manually, as I’ve done today, but it’s certainly less convenient. Interestingly, they’ll still allow the tools to post to Facebook Pages, which tend to be used by businesses and groups. Of course, commercial entities such as pages have greatly reduced visibility in the News Feed unless you’re willing to pay to promote the post.

Why would Facebook do this? On the surface, it’s with good intention. They say it’s to prevent spam and nefarious actions on the site by making it harder to post across multiple profiles simultaneously. Some of the other changes they’re making that affect me less but some people a lot more are to protect user privacy. All laudable, right?

Maybe not. Here is what WordPress has to say:

While Facebook says it is introducing this change to improve their platform and prevent the misuse of personal profiles, we believe that eliminating cross-posting from WordPress is another step back in Facebook’s support of the open web, especially since it affects people’s ability to interact with their network (unless they’re willing to pay for visibility).

What if the moves are just to further insulate the Facebook platform from external content and/or actions? What if it actually is about solidifying their monopoly in the social media space? I won’t bore you with all of the API changes but some are pretty significant, including restricting a lot of the data pages get. Can you pay for it? I’ll willing to bet you can.

I guess my business question to you all is about where any of us draw the line in protecting our business. We’re living in a world in which reducing friction – the choke points within our daily lives where things stop flowing smoothly – is becoming expected. Facebook just added friction to adding content to their platform, a platform that would become almost useless without users doing exactly that. I’ve got trust issues with Facebook based on their behavior over the last decade with respect to everything from data privacy to their openness about what they’re doing. When traffic my stuff drops off, will I even bother posting there?

Do I think Facebook is going to go out of business without the screed generating engagement for them? No. Might they if it becomes too much trouble for anyone with engaging content to post on the site? Could be. I’ll guess we’ll all stay tuned right?

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June 6, 2018 · 11:50 am

Facebook, Sears, and Kodak

When I was a lad several decades ago, many Americans did their shopping at Sears and took their pictures with Kodak film (I can explain “film” to you youngsters if need be). More recently, my kids might have shopped at American Apparel or Claire’s. What all of those formerly huge companies have in common is that they are all nearly dead. The reasons for that range from bad management to dumb financial deals to changing tastes to the digital revolution. In every case, however, I think there is a common thread of a failure to understand their customers in the context of the customers’ changing world.

We have something similar going on in my mind with Facebook. It’s huge and seems invulnerable but one might have said the same thing about Kodak or Sears 50 years ago. First, think about how the world is changing for their customers. Privacy has moved from something that digital folk like me were babbling about many years ago to something that is on everyone’s mind. In an April survey of 1,051 US adult internet users by Janrain, most respondents said they are not in favor of websites or apps using what they learn about them online to target ads. In fact, 70% of them want some very restrictive laws, similar to the E.U.’s GDPR, passed here. I don’t think there is any doubt that a tech backlash is going on and the more consumers and lawmakers find out about the sloppy (at best), invasive, and maybe criminal (at worst) data use by large tech companies, the greater that backlash is going to become.

Facebook’s entire business is built around invading your privacy. Two points from eMarketer:

More people are becoming suspicious of sharing data through third parties. In a March 2018 survey from Raymond James, more than eight in 10 US internet users said they were at least somewhat concerned about how their personal data is being used on Facebook. Similarly, in a Gallup survey of 785 Facebook users in April 2018, 43% said they were very concerned about invasion of privacy. That’s an increase of 30% in 2011.

What has resulted is that people, especially young people, are sharing less content. The entire reason Facebook is valuable for most people is that content that their friends, classmates, and family post. It’s the network effect – that value of the network relates to the number of people on that network.

I’m not shorting Facebook stock today but I’m not so sure that unless they get their privacy house in order that won’t be a bad play down the road. Less content means fewer active users which leads to less revenue. Will they all move to Instagram (a Facebook company)? Maybe, but probably not since that’s not what’s occurring now. As each day brings a new headline involving a bad actor and data, another nail gets pounded into the coffins of companies that don’t respect their customers’ privacy and wishes. Privacy and data use are no longer just food for geek chats. They’re on the front page. How long can Facebook or any company last if they don’t figure this out? Longer than Sears or Kodak?

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November 1, 2017 · 12:06 pm

Be Inefficient – It’s Better For Your Business

Representatives of Facebook, Google, and Twitter have been summoned to Capitol Hill to explain what they know about how Russia used their platforms to interfere in the last Presidential election.  Their testimony began yesterday, and there was a recurring theme that I think has implications for any business. It has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with serving your customers.

Facebook logo Español: Logotipo de Facebook Fr...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You may remember something from a few months back. There was a kerfuffle about Facebook using human editors on the News Feed who had a liberal bias. Whether that’s true or not is immaterial to our discussion. Facebook removed human editors from the “trending topics” feature seen in the news feeds of users. Given the decreased human oversight, gaming Facebook’s algorithm became easier, as demonstrably false news reports spread with increasing speed during the election. As Recode reported:

Sen. Jeff Flake is asking Facebook how it monitors its service — humans or artificial intelligence or both? Stretch (note: Facebook’a lawyer) said both, and explained a bit about how algorithms can detect non-human behavior, like someone creating many accounts in a very short amount of time. But while software can detect some of this stuff, humans often need to make a final decision on whether or not contents should be removed. Twitter and Google confirmed they have similar setups.

Fewer humans means fewer edits, apparently. What caught my attention yesterday was that each of the three platforms testified that putting in human-based solutions are inefficient for their business. What about the people on their platforms? A significant percentage of young people get their news only from Facebook. How can they be expected to understand the issues when the facts that are presented to them may be propaganda and not news or factual at all?

None of us in business can afford to make decisions solely on the basis of what’s good for the business. We need to stay customer and consumer-centric. After all, you wouldn’t want doctors in an ER failing to administer expensive drugs because it’s inefficient for the hospital, right? The restaurant that cuts the quality of their ingredients or service because they need higher margins won’t be around for very long.

Like most of you, I use these three platforms every day. Twitter is a cesspool, in my opinion, filled with trolls, hate-speech, and spam, but it’s also critically important. It’s a shame that they use the “free speech” argument to ignore that crap. There are limits on speech – try yelling “fire” in a theater and see what happens to you – and Twitter needs to clean up its act. All three of these companies need to quit using the profit motive and their responsibility to shareholders as excuses to let the bad actors do their thing. Be a little less efficient and more customer-friendly. Facebook admitted they knew something was going on and did nothing, allowing the “fake news” and propaganda to disseminate. That’s not consumer-friendly, is it?

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