New news feed
Facebook’s changes are the first major shift in social media this year, writes Augustus’s Richard Fitzgerald
Every year Mark Zuckerberg takes to his Facebook profile and announces a personal challenge he will take on. The CEO has visited every US state, run 365 miles, built an AI for his home, read 25 books and learned Mandarin. This year, on January 5, he announced he would “fix Facebook”. This is in recognition of the ‘fake news’ backlash the company has received, and he acknowledged it must take some responsibility for the influence that the media people consume has on society.
Facebook’s mission was updated recently to from “Making the world more open and connected” to “Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” This was because the previous mission didn’t encourage any positive outcome from being connected.
The reaction was positive. People understood Zuckerberg’s view and some were impressed with his leadership skills.
Then on January 12 he posted again. This time he revealed he would he will be changing users’ Facebook feeds to include more of their family and friends’ posts over brand and business content. The purpose was “to improve your well-being”.
The main points are: “The first changes you’ll see will be in news feed, where you can expect to see more from your friends, family and groups.” And “Public content (brands)... should encourage meaningful interactions between people.”
He followed up by saying: “I expect the time people spend on Facebook and some measures of engagement will go down.”
Facebook’s share price dropped 5 per cent on the back of this post, as their founder was saying time on the site would drop.
So who is effected? 1.
Brands who have Facebook pages are well aware of how content publishing works, as they have been allocating budget to promote their posts for the past six years. Facebook’s algorithm for the news feed decides on what content to show each individual user. In addition to friends’ posts, there is also a combination of public content from businesses, brands and media. The weighting each post receives has changed over the years, with many brands taking ‘zero reach’ as a given and allocating budget to boost posts to Facebook’s very targeted audiences. Another post came on January 19 that included the update: “You’ll see less public content, including news, video, and posts from brands.” This reconfirms that brands’ reach will be further affected.
The section of ‘public’ content most likely to be affected is media publishers, many of whom have come to rely on Facebook as a source of traffic and who have also pivoted to video as a reaction to the greater significance the news feed has given video. Publishers are already under pressure to generate revenue, given that Facebook receives the lion’s share of digital spend. The most recent updated stated: “We expect news to make up roughly 4 per cent of news feed – down from roughly 5 per cent today.” It also said that news trustworthiness is going to be rewarded, and it will be voted on by the community. There will also be a new section for local news.
Shareholders shouldn’t worry too much, as Zuckerberg hasn’t discussed Instagram or WhatsApp, and the share price has rebounded slightly. Once the next earnings forecast comes out, this little blip will be long forgotten.
2. 3. What are the possible reactions to the changes?
A trend in publishing at the moment is in audio, recognising the presence voice and home devices had at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this year. The media world is going after podcasts like they are the latest invention. Other publishers are working on search engine optimisation, improving their apps, taking a look at Snapchat’s Discover section, wondering what a video and publishing strategy on Twitter could do for them, and even considering LinkedIn’s news feed.
While some are saying this is what happened to brands’ reach in the past, and it was still an effective platform, we may need to spend more, but we’re not giving up on Facebook just yet. An approach is to take advantage while others are fearful, publish even more video, acquire even more likes.
This is an early reminder this year that new media is always changing. At Augustus, we are working on all the above for our Lovin Saudi and Lovin Dubai brands. Adapting to platform changes is part and parcel of new media publishing. Jumping ship, especially one the size of Facebook, may reduce your audience to a fraction of what it is at the moment. If brands can create meaningful content, and if publishers can create trustworthy content, they should be OK.