The Problem with FaceBook

As an experiment, I set up a Blood Sugar 101 FaceBook page last year to see if I could spread more awareness of blood-sugar related issues.

The page attracted a lot of interest and currently has over 1,100 "likes." But FaceBook had to do something to justify the billions it winkled out of investors, and what it has done is pernicious.  After urging content providers to generate likes--even suggesting that we advertise with FaceBook to raise the number of people who like our page (I didn't), FaceBook has now stopped showing page updates to most people who have liked our pages.

I had noticed this when I reviewed the feeble stats that FaceBook provides for pages. Then I read online that only 20% of people who had liked a page were seeing the updates. A poll I posted as an update on the Blood Sugar 101 FaceBook page a few weeks ago confirmed this. Only 20% of the people who had liked the post responded to a question about whether they could see the feed.

Now when I post on the Blood Sugar 101 FaceBook page, FaceBook is hitting me with something new--a chance to PAY for the ability to have my status updates seen by the people who have already liked the page. (Details here.) For a mere $5-10 bucks per update I can ensure that people who subscribed to my page under the impression that it meant they would see the updates can see those updates.

If this had been explained explicitly when I created the page, that would be one thing. But this was not at all the way that FaceBook worked a year ago when I started the page. For example,  FaceBook has also disabled the ability of page owners to contact those who have liked their pages--a feature that was  intact when I created my page and was part of what attracted me to doing it.

I don't spam people, but now and then it would be nice to be able to send out messages about particularly important events. Not so coincidentally, FaceBook took away my ability to contact page likers just at the time they started charging for the ability to have those same subscribers see feeds.

This is making me seriously reconsider whether I should post on FaceBook at all. FaceBook is using the fact that people like my page to gather information they sell to marketers who then target those people. Since my page discusses diabetes and diet, people who like the page will get shown ads for the kind of crap exploiters love to push on people with diabetes.

Since Blogger has never played these kinds of games with me I'm liking the blog more and more and am thinking I'll move my posting activity back to the blog. But because many of the people who do still see my feeds have asked me to keep the FaceBook page going, for now I am going to keep the Blood Sugar 101 FaceBook page alive.

However, if you are on FaceBook and interested in seeing the feeds there, don't assume FaceBook will show them to you. To see the updates, you'll have to bookmark the page and remember to visit it from time to time to see the updates.

If you are active on FaceBook, it would be a good idea to also warn your friends that FaceBook is probably not showing them the feeds from pages they want to follow and that they are charging page creators for the "privilege" of having their feeds seen. Though you may find that many of those who have liked your page are no longer seeing your feeds either.