Facebook: Hey, Nice Media You Got There, Shame If Some Kind Of News Feed Change Happened To It

Facebook: Hey, Nice Media You Got There, Shame If Some Kind Of News Feed Change Happened To It

Facebook tests of a major change to the way its News Feed works in at least six countries have once raised fears the social media giant — a powerful gatekeeper between publishers and audiences — could be preparing to doom parts of the media, the Guardian reported.

Photo: AP

Per the Guardian, Facebook has tested a new layout in which posts from friends and family as well as paid advertisements appear in the News Feed users see when they log in, while non-promoted posts would be “shifted over to a secondary feed” called the Facebook Explore Feed. That system could essentially relegate most Facebook pages, which many publishers use to reach audiences, to second-tier status unless they shell out money to promote their posts — and according to the Guardian report, many small publishers in the test markets in Slovakia, Serbia, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere have already seen huge hits to their social reach.

“The change has seen users’ engagement with Facebook pages drop precipitously, from 60 per cent to 80 per cent,” the paper wrote. “… Overnight, from Wednesday to Thursday, a broad cross-section of the 60 largest Facebook pages in Slovakia saw two-thirds to three-quarters of their Facebook reach disappear, according to stats from Facebook-owned analytics service CrowdTangle.”

In a blog post, Finnish journalist Filip Struhárik of Dennik N called the initial results the most dramatic drops in organic reach he’d ever seen. But he told the Guardian, “It’s hard to say now how big it will be. Problems have also hit ‘Buzzfeed-like’ sites, which were more dependent on social traffic.”

It’s “the classic Facebook playbook,” Enders Analysis senior research analyst Matti Littunen told the Guardian. “First give lots of organic reach to one content type, then they have to pay for reach, then they can only get through to anyone by paying.”

The big issue here is that many websites — particularly new media ventures — are very reliant on a handful of places to get traffic. This is particularly true regarding Facebook, which operates as a sort of central digital hub for news and discussion for vast swathes of the population, and is so dominant in that role its power is increasingly unchallengeable and frankly sort of terrifying.

Larger publications like the New York Times tend to have more diversified sources of traffic and are more insulated from the problem. But the majority of the media is likely vulnerable to some extent, and there’s only so many other places to go. For example, a search engine-based strategy still leaves a site open to the whims of Google.

Compounding this is Facebook’s News Feed algorithm, which is a black box of variables shifting audiences from one trending topic to the next, and Facebook’s rapid-fire switches from a focus on one kind of content to another. For example, remember that Facebook Live craze, or its ongoing and chaotic handling of Instant Articles?

To the user, these might appear as short-term trends. But to media companies whose entire model relies on a steady flow of Facebook clicks, any one of these changes can be seismic, with millions of dollars in personnel and equipment being shifted from one project to another in the blink of an eye. And there’s not exactly a huge surplus of money in media for promoted posts right now.

So it’s not surprising that the possibility of the spigot being cut off entirely is unnerving some folks. But this is just a test, and it’s not clear whether Facebook could ultimately choose to ditch the idea. Whatever version of the two-feed format it does roll out could also end up driving just as much traffic. And for the company’s part, Facebook’s head of News Feed Adam Mosseri says “It’s not global and there are no plans to be.”

Much ado about nothing or not, this is yet another reminder that much of the media ecosystem that produces the content you read every day is built on Facebook’s sand, and that sand could shift at any time. And sometimes it might shift right into a sinkhole.

We’ve reached out to Facebook for more context, and will update this post if we hear back.

[The Guardian]


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