Whether you agree with what they do or not, Facebook and Google are both highly interesting, complex creatures.
Google continues to keep website owners and developers terrified and frazzled over whether or not Google will deem their site fit for their search engine, let alone ranking. You might know ALL there is to know about SEO (and if you do, you're probably not sleeping very well right now), and you could still wind up in the penalty box because of a simple error.
Facebook on the other hand, has recently purchased Instagram for $1 Billion!! Dr. Evil was clearly in the wrong biznes. As much as I love Instagram, and I do… you just have to check my front page to see how much… is it worth $1 Billion??
On a different note, Facebook has also decided to not let anyone share a link from “blogspot.ca” – where a number of Canadian bloggers call home, stating that a number of viruses and questionable actions occur from these sites. The really interesting part is if these bloggers change the “.ca” to a “.com”, all is right and shiny with the world and their posts can be shared on Facebook once more. So, .com good, .ca bad.
But wait, there's more!
Perhaps after that bid on Instagram, they're a bit strapped for cash, 'cause now they want to charge fan page admins a min of $5 per post IF the admin wants their post to have a farther reach.
Oh, the implications. Seriously, this sounds like a bad TV script where thugs promise to keep the neighbourhood safe by extorting a monthly “membership” fee from their “clients”.
So what does this mean exactly?
Well, for the everyday Facebook user, it means that you're now going to see “advertised” posts in your feed. Businesses that have the funds to pay for advertised posts to get that farther reach are going to pay. And businesses that can't pay? They might just have to work a little bit harder to be heard.
The beauty of Facebook is disintegrating. In the few workshops I've lead about social media, one of the major topics was how social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter can level the playing field between multi-national corporations and the basement, online-only shop. If both companies had the same social networking finesse, then they would both be seen. Now? The company that has more advertising funds is going to be on top.
I should make it clear though, that this isn't limited to business pages only. I have my facebook fan page listed under websites, so it seems like this post-purchasing deal is available to anyone who handles a fan page.
They're also up to something particularly goofy.
If you own a fan page, you may have noticed a little clock on the bottom left side of the post window. It seems that Facebook wants to get rid of the need of services like HootSuite, which allowed you to schedule your daily posts. – Hey, we all love you, but we can't sit in front of the computer all day long.
So, I decided to test the scheduler out with a post that I have ready for tomorrow. And this is was the result:
I cannot schedule posts for a future date.
*facepalm*
For one thing, I'm not sure why they'd want to give you the option to schedule a post back in 2011 (though not illustrated above, the option is there in the year drop down tool), and the scheduler itself is a hot mess – why not a simple calendar interface? Who needs to add posts in the past?
So, in the meantime, until Facebook finds a way to fix this issue, I'll be posting live or with HootSuite (… okay mostly live) – though it was a nice dream.
ETA: The photo post scheduler will not work currently, but the text scheduler will.
