This just in — From a Silicon Valley tech gossip site — Valleywag
If true, what’s this mean for your social branding?
(sound of marketers scrambling)
via Valleywag
“A source professionally familiar with Facebook’s marketing strategy, who requested to remain anonymous, tells Valleywag that the social network is “in the process of” slashing “organic page reach” down to 1 or 2 percent. This would affect “all brands”—meaning an advertising giant like Nike, which has spent a great deal of internet effort collecting over 16 million Facebook likes, would only be able to affect of around a 160,000 of them when it pushes out a post. Companies like Gawker, too, rely on gratis Facebook propagation for a huge amount of their audience. Companies on Facebook will have to pay or be pointless.
That 160,000 still sounds like a lot of people, sure. But how about my favorite restaurant here in New York, Pies ‘n’ Thighs, which has only 3,281 likes—most likely locals who actually care about updates from a nearby restaurant? They would reach only a few dozen customers. A smaller business might only reach one. This also assumes the people “reached” bother to even look at the post.
The alternative is of course to pay for more attention. If you want an audience beyond a measly one or two percent, you’ll have to pay money—perhaps a lot of money, if you’re a big business.
The change was described to me by a source as a cataclysm for businesses, something Facebook is calling the extreme throttling a “strategy pivot” they’re slowly telling brands one by one so as not to start a panic. It might be too late. Reports of “crashing” engagement numbers have been floating around for a little while, but this is the first time we’ve heard it drift out of Facebook proper.”
