I spend a good bit of time on Facebook scrolling through the news feed seeing what my ‘friends’ are up to.
Recently I lightened up my ‘friends’ list by about 50% and this allowed me to scroll through the news feed and see more of what people I actually know and am truly interested in are posting on their Facebook page. I scroll through the feed and ‘like’ some items and comment on others while I watch the things I post collect cobwebs. Thanks to the algorithm Facebook uses, my posts will continue to do so too.
The algorithm Facebook uses can be summed up easily by understanding this concept: Actions you take on Facebook are going to impact what you and your friends see in the news feed.
Ultimately the goal of Facebook (at least as far as the news feed is concerned) is to show content to users that they find interesting, so that they will keep coming back to the site. Posts that get a disproportionate amount of engagement (likes, clicks, comments, shares) will be seen by a lot of people. If no one is liking, clicking, commenting on or sharing my posts they will just fall lower on the news feed and no one sees them unless they come directly to my page.
EdgeRank …or whatever Facebook calls it these days.
The news feed on Facebook was first implemented in September 2006, promising to provide “a personalized list of news stories throughout the day, so you’ll know when Mark adds Britney Spears to his Favorites or when your crush is single again.” (Yes, Facebook actually said that.) Facebook wanted to show users the most important content from their social network without making them click to visit their friends’ profiles. That would be just way too much work right? In trying to figure out a way to decide what was important to each person they came up with their ever changing algorithm.
So for instance, when your friends like or comment on something you post it tends to rise to the top of your news feed. The more people engage with your content, the more people will see that engagement in their news feed. No engagement and posts just do not get seen.
Quitting Facebook is a double edge sword in that I want to be able to know when The Paul Charles Band is playing. I want, and sort of need to be able to see what others are posting and to post for SpyCraftU, a company I am on the Board of Advisors for. I want to see what my friend and mentor Paul Kyriazi
Yeah yeah, I have heard the joke: Quitting Facebook is the new, adult version of running away from home. We all know you’re doing it for attention and we all know that you’ll be back…
And you are probably right. I probably will be back. Yet for now I have a bunch of big things I am working on that I need to concentrate on. Since whatever I post on Facebook does not seem to interest any one enough for them to like, click, comment or share it then it seems it is just a waste of time for me to do so. In the meanwhile you can find me here on my personal blog, at 1KSmiles or on Twitter or Google+. Texts and emails work too. 😉
And so I say good-bye to Facebook…for now.
