Facebook is a wickedly wide web of news, people, businesses, and all sorts of other tchotchkes that inevitably entangle with user streams and ad nets. But make no mistake, Facebook is not a user generated “web” like the world wide variety. It was spun by a host of spiders loyal to Facebook’s profit and loss analysts. What’s good for the king arachnid’s (Zuckerburg and his stakeholders) purse is good for the colony; and that means feeding on the most likely to capitulate: businesses; small and large ones alike. These prey, looking more like meaty insects everyday, invested mounds of legtime marching up the viscous red carpet Facebook laid out. The prize was the consumer.
And once nabbed, so to speak, many merchants never squirted a sugar trail back to their own stores–they took comfort in Facebook’s freemium promise (however understated), spent wildly on Facebook stores, splash pages, and other heavy duty development solutions to engage their catch (customers) where they were. With today’s Facebook Page refresh (more like a face transplant), the net will begin squeezing businesses, until new layers of cash flakes from their cracked visions of “free marketing on Facebook.” And satisfied for now, the eight legged kingdom will sleep fat, until hunger strikes again.
As a merchant, here’s what you’ll need to plan additional Facebook spending on, if you (like most) want to stay in the game.
According to this article in Social Media Today:
1) Facebook’s premium “Reach Generator” application is much more likely to be employed now that Page reach is limited to about 18 percent (says this Techcrunch article). That doesn’t say anything about conversions; just that if merchants want a better chance at having their posts “seen” by fans, they’ll need to pay Facebook to pull back the heavy stage curtains.
2) Pages will look totally different, so that means back to the development/design board for a lot of merchants who went all all jazzing their page out. One example is the cover photo:”Facebook has eliminated the unique landing tab and in its stead has instituted a 851 x 315 pixel cover photo that lets you convey your brand image. But there are limitations, lest this feature quickly degenerate into a billboard of sorts. You are not allowed to include price or purchase information, your contact details and any calls to action. Facebook claims that these restrictions encourage businesses to behave more like people as users interact with these pages. But at the back of our minds we really cannot shake off the feeling that this has more to do with leveraging revenue opportunities for the social network.”
3) Outside of the permanent photos tab, merchants will only have three tabs worth bothering with (more can be accessed, if fans are willing to look, but they won’t, so why bother).
4) There are also features like Direct Messaging, which lets users send message to the Page admin without displaying on the Timeline), that may create a little more legwork for merchants’ FB marketing staff. It’s an obvious salvo over to Twitter developers to say, we can add a more private customer service channel too.
There are a number of other changes, but the big one in our opinion is that with the new look, even the fans who are seeing your posts (only up to 18% if you haven’t paid to upgrade) won’t be nearly as focused on what you’re say–the interface is way too busy to encourage the same level of meaningful and fluid conversation as was possible before.
What do you think–are there more positive forces at work than what we’re highlighting?
