Facebook, you are dead to me.
I think most of the world has a love/hate relationship with the social network, Facebook. You have to be a part of Facebook even though deep down you really don’t care about 95% of the items or people that show up in your news feed. Facebook was a mess to begin with and has only become much, much worse over time.
I no longer have a love/hate relationship, I simply have a hate/hate relationship and am finally doing something about it.
As a blogger and someone that needs to attract as many eyes as possible, I needed to be on Facebook. I needed to have a page on Facebook. I needed as many likes as I could get. I needed Facebook, whether I liked it or not. For a very small amount of time, our relationship was good. Even though my audience was (and still is) smaller than most, I was able to post something with no hesitation that a decent amount of eyeballs would see it. That is no longer true.
Over time, I noticed changes. I noticed negative changes. I noticed my views plummeting. I noticed the same people commenting or liking my content. No one new. I noticed something wrong. I noticed that Facebook broke “pages.”
Like I said, I don’t have that many likes (380) and therefore don’t expect that many views on a consistent basis. I get that. However, when I am happy that a 100 people saw one of my posts, I think something is wrong. When most posts get around 20-60 views (60 views = 16% of my audience), I think something is wrong. (I know others who have much worse statistics than I do.)
There is nothing that makes sense about Facebook Pages.
Oh wait, yes there is.
Facebook favors bigger brands. Facebook favors people who pay to advertise. Facebook favors money.
Facebook has pushed aside the small people in favor of the motto “bigger is better.” It is as simple as that.
That is not okay. 380 people consciously decided to like my Facebook page. They consciously decided that they wanted to see my posts, my content, in their news feed. Too bad says Facebook. Facebook has decided that you truly did not want to see my posts, my content. Facebook has now said they know what you want better than you do.
They have taken over content delivery and it is killing all of the “small” pages. The problem is that other people are noticing as well. This is not just something I am complaining about. Other people are angry and are starting to move away from Facebook.
I am moving away from Facebook. The above is my current cover image on Facebook. I am moving on. I am moving away from Facebook and to Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest. I am moving to other social media networks that don’t think they know better than their users. I am moving to other social media networks that don’t censor information their users have requested.
Facebook is dead to me and I am letting the world know.
Please, follow me everywhere other than Facebook. Please, subscribe (at the foot of any grilledshane.com page) to be notified of new posts. Please email me. Please share this post. Thank you.
UPDATE
I posted this entry without noticing that The Culinary Life has an updated post in regards to her issues with Facebook, from which my view point started. While reading Stephanie’s post, make sure to check out the video she links to at the bottom, it explains everything much better and more succinctly then I believe I have. Enjoy.