I, like millions of other people, have a Facebook account.
I don’t use it all the time; and when I am on vacation I don’t even bother looking at it.
I am not one of those people who are constantly updating my Facebook status on what I am eating, where I am eating it at, what I am watching, what I am reading and just about anything else one can think of posting. A lot of my posts are about my kids, but in that area too, I don’t go overboard.
On Thursday, I was trying to find story ideas.
Every once in a while, it seems as though I hit what we in the office call “a famine.” It’s when we just have hit a wall and can’t think of any stories. It happens with every journalist at one point or another.
I started looking at various websites and Facebook pages. Then, I realized something. I am friends with the Green River Chamber of Commerce, the Green River Police Department, City of Green River and the Green River Parks and Recreation. I am probably friends with more organizations than just those, but I am not going to spend time looking it all up.
I start to get irritated when I visit those particular Facebook pages and realize I have been missing a bunch of information.
I wonder why. I liked their pages, shouldn’t I be getting their status updates?
Apparently not.
I ask my coworker David Martin, who is more up-to-date on this Facebook stuff than I am, and he says Facebook has changed its algorithms.
Whatever that means.
He said since Facebook has changed its algorithms to bring more stories from friends into a user’s news feed. As a result, public Facebook pages just aren’t receiving the coverage they used to. In fact, each time they post something maybe 4 percent of their followers actually receive a notification. As a Facebook user who liked all of these public pages and hasn’t received one update from them, I personally can attest that this it in fact the case.
Martin believes Facebook is attempting to force organizations with public pages into buying exposure on the website, essentially paying for their likes. I am not even sure if these groups know they need to do this.
I don’t even know what the fee is; and frankly don’t care since I find the whole thing a bit ridiculous.
Which leads me to the next issue and my subject of irritation. Who has time to go to each different Facebook page to try and find out what each group is doing? I started to and about an hour later, with only visiting four or five Facebook pages, I waived the white flag. I don’t have time for this. Who does?
It’s a shame that in order for these public Facebook pages to have the coverage they need, they would have to pay.
So here’s the question I pose to all of the public entities using this as a main source of getting its information out there -- Is it really working?
I think that answer is clear. It’s not.
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