I have notice less response to my postings. I also had  noticed fewer business posts in my feed. Maybe Google+ is looking better after all. I’ve heard rumors that Facebook was becoming a dinosaur. I think they maybe working on a self-fulfilling prophecy.

My Business Page has been barely seen recently and now I know why. Still getting nice engagement from those who see it. I hope you are right in that FB will be coming out with an even stronger tool for businesses.

It seems we’re not all experiencing the same changes. I still see a lot of Brand pages in my newsfeed. Maybe more than previously because “Recent news” now shows up on the front page. Meanwhile, I don’t see a real drop of impressions on my pages, but I dont have hundreds of thousands of fans to make it statistically significant.

I was the one who wrote that email and sent it to SZ. I’m a highly trained strategist and experienced direct sales trainer + marketer, with 10 years uni (PhD) on my side + 20 years exp, and a website owner. I’m no airhead, but not a FB expert either. I’ve learned what I know about FB through osmosis. I do analyse my stats, and I can see these trends are across the board for business pages, except for the entertainment pages eg. pop stars which are ranking very highly in my newsfeed even though I don’t interact with these pages at all. The FB algorithm has obviously been coded to rank these sites higher up in the newsfeeds, and regular bus pages down and off, in line with the new “I’m listening to” and “I read” format. FB have obviously got a Google-esque algorithm controlling the newsfeeds now with a user interaction variable. No matter what strategy I come up with, I will not be able to stop this algorithm from pushing my bus page off the cliff and crippling it.  I can only hope that FB will do something when all the big corporates start suing them, but I’m not holding my breath. I’m re-strategising with alternative communication channels. Game on – let the litigation begin. Hilary Thacker, Wedding Dress Express, Australia.

I noticed fall in interaction for my brand page (comments/ likes) a few hours after it the new Newsfeed was introduced. As a user, I prefer the new one, but as a brand rep it’s posing quite a problem. Perhaps FB wants businesses to spend more money to reach fans/ prospects/ customers?

I’m waiting on the new design to roll in before I update all my Facebook pages, they are all due for some major changes.

I do like the communication through the wall though, I think because of Mobile Apps, most people are more likely to see the message on their wall than in the “hidden” pages update in their messages, I know I only check them once every few weeks, and I know a lot of people that don’t even know about it.

Of course, the other thing everyone could consider is to just setup a PPC campaign and offer 0.10c per click or less – in Ireland, that ad will probably never get shown and if it does, rarely, so the cost could be nil or negligible at least.

Just a thought, love to hear feedback or counter arguments: Personally I don’t see why FB shouldn’t charge – after all they’re hosting your page, images and video for you – why does cloud web 2.0/3.0 suddenly = a free lunch (so to speak)

I still also don’t see how having Fans is the same as generating traffic sales. If each month your site generates 5k visits, chances are they are mostly new. In a year, that means 60k new faces seeing your site, product and brand. If you beg 500 people on twitter, facebook and e-mail to Like you and maintain it for 12 months, all you have is 500 people (?) or am I missing something?

Im just starting out, and I find it hard to get my fans to respond to my wall post. Also, I do not see other businesses I like in my news feed to often.

Also, this is pissing our readers off more than anything… we run a lives news blog, and the locals love to see breaking news on their facebook walls… now they’re complaining because they have no way to see our feed. The ‘Lists’ are not doing the trick.

Your images are not showing up in this post at all. Might you please fix, as I’m particularly interested in the mock up you did? Thanks.

Thank you so much for this post.  I just realized that my pages are down from 2000+ impressions a week ago to none today.  None.  The last 2 posts I put there have no impressions indicated. 

This is disheartening, as my page was not promoting a big brand, but rather my start up cultural newspaper, which currently doesn’t generate any revenue.  Facebook was providing the most referral traffic to my website and, in turn, the traffic was what I planned to show potential advertisers.  Now that traffic has almost stopped.

This is such a disappointing change and it makes no sense.  Your post tells us that Facebook has cut off messaging your page “likers.”  Now, they suggest you post to your wall.  However, the changes they’ve just made mean that nobody is seeing your posts.  Does anybody else see that this makes no sense?!

Like the people you mentioned in your post, I also spent time and money accumulating Facebook “likes” for my page.  This is an unfair change that is hurting those that have supported Facebook.  Yes, I might be a “commercial” interest, but my Facebook badge is proudly displayed on my 2 newspaper sits – so I’m, essentially, promoting Facebook in exchange for the use of their Pages feature. 

I can’t believe they would be so unfair and make a major change like this that is going to hurt so many people that use their Pages function.  You allude to the fact that something better must be coming, but what do we all do till then?!

And just to respond to Rush Frisby below because I found your comment a little trite: 

“If you’re relying on something you have no control over for business,
well then that’s your fault. You can always pay for advertising on
facebook, which is what I am sure they want you to do anyways.”

This is a silly comment for 2 reasons:

1. The entire world and every top brand was relying on Facebook, amongst other social networks for business.  Are you in marketing?  If so, have you read any of the marketing trade pubs over the past 5 years? 

2. Yes, we can now spend more money on advertising on Facebook (which I already did).  However, I did this to drive page “likes” and now, due to the changes, those likes are not able to participate with my page because they don’t see my posts.  So what’s the point of the spending on this advertising?  I’d only be getting more “likes” I cant interact with?

I’m sure Facebook is looking at ways to extract more advertising dollars out of companies before its IPO. This may be a short term business plan that bits them in the arse. Way to go facebook 

I agree with this. Stopping the inneccasant yelling that businesses do on Facebook is good. This is just like when they stopped those annoying game (Farmville) notifications that loads of people got.

The messages weren’t even messages. They were Updates. Users received no notifications upon reciving them and they didn’t make the message icon go red. They were stored in the Other folder.

Facebook has not removed Pages status updates from going onto the News Feed.

My church is having this problem.  We’re releasing some new videos this
week and most people don’t see them in their feed.  We thought things
were broken but turns out it’s just FB not showing the posts to most of
the people.  And they took away the ability to message all our followers
so we just kind of screwed.

Why the heck would they put things in place with filtering set so high
that you don’t see most things.  Wouldn’t it make more sense to set
filtering low, so you see everything, and then let people turn it up and
start filtering what they don’t want?  The problem now is that people
don’t know that they’re missing things so they don’t know they need to
go change anything.

Thanks a lot FB.

Yes! We’ve noticed this too. We aren’t getting nearly as many comments as normal and our “likes” to posts are down too. It’s very discouraging after working so hard to build up and engaged page.

Very interesting! What do they say about serving two mastors. It sounds like Facebook has aligned their constituency with the personal end user as opposed to the business owner. How long can that be a profitable decision. Terri Nobleman

Ok hang on… They say the best way to engage fans is to post to the wall… 50% of my fans are members of my service. They aren’t getting the updates from the wal as per Facebooks own decision to stop Pages from showing the News Feed.

So no way to engage by sending messages as of September 30 and NO way the updates show in the News Feed. Talk about being snookered. Facebook better wise up. It isn’t a big revenue spinner for me but they still get my advertising dollars just so that I can ‘have a presence’.

I pay for ‘Likes’ via Facebiook advertising and yet Facebook wont let those ‘Likes’ receive updates via their timeline, they cant be messaged and the only way to keep them updated is if they constantly check in. I am about to pull the plug.

Kevin,

Not sure if this helps, but I found that if I post directly to my Facebook page, my posts are still seen and my impression count is now the same as it was prior to the changes. 

However the big difference now is in my use of Hootsuite.  If I post to my Facebook wall through the Hootsuite console, my impression count goes down to almost nothing.  So, essentially, Facebook is now penalizing marketers for using tools like Hootsuite to make our jobs easier when managing social media accounts for multiple endeavors or clients.

If I were the people at Hootsuite I’d be seriously pissed off becase this really discourages its use.  Now,  I also noticed that the people at Klout have begun to penalize for the use of tools like Hootsuite.

So, Facebook and Twitter are maintaining their market dominance by making the use of 3rd party providers obsolete.  Clever, right?

Jenifer

My impressions have gone down by 83% in the last month. My posts to the wall have gone up 47% in the last 2mths. My ‘Likes’ have increased by 729% in the last month. Wall activity is up 139% in the last month and ONLY because I drive my existing members to it to ‘Like’ posts etc. The ‘Likes’ that are not members I have pushed there myself have cost me money which thanks to Farcebook, is not converting into a listening audience because the audience can not ‘hear’. 

I posted my opinion on the ‘Farcebook Pages’ Page and no guessing what happens – DELETED…and removed from the page. THAT is REALLY bad form for a business operating for the people, aside from being completely rude.

Not only are the changes discouraging after putting so much effort into the page, it has also cost people like myself money to do so. Money that Facebook has happily taken only to now say that we can not directly engage our customers and our posts will not be given any priority in News Feeds. What about the people who have ‘Liked’.

Why can’t new posts show up in Notifications the same as with Groups? This is what I am asked every day by people who I suggest to join Facebook just to ‘Like’ the Bettortrader Page. They can not find any updates at all on there wall or anywhere and most people assume they will show under Notifications. For the majority who are techno noobs, it is not a ‘no brainer’ as it really should be. You ‘Like’ something, you want to read about that something or you wouldn’t like it would you? Simple!

I for one ‘Like’ a page because I would ‘Like’ to know more about it ie receive updates and informative news from that Page. Doesn’t it make more sense to give the user an option to see or not to see feeds from a particular Page? What is the point of liking a Page if not to somehow benefit from it? 

KR

Facebook accepted billions in ad revenue from businesses based the the ability for businesses to reach their fans directly, then they pull the rug out from underneath all of them by eliminating the functionality.  It’s fraud, plain and simple.  Facebook will likely get sued.

Someone who is paying for advertising should threaten FB with a lawsuit. This is a different situation, but not that FB can be fought. We had a situation where our business page got hacked, and the hacker was arrested (in our case it was someone we knew). FB’s policy is that if a hacker hacks into your FB page, that it basically now belongs to the hacker, and you need to contact the hacker to get it back–doesn’t sound so legal to me. I checked their terms of agreement and there was nothing about this in there.

After attempting multiple times over the course of a week to get it remedied through FB and have our page returned to us, by posting in various help forums & submitting multiple times to the only business page submission form I could find, I finally wrote a very firm letter to FB, informing them that they had illegally taken control of our business assets and were now aiding and abetting a criminal act, and if they didn’t return our page to us then not only would we be going to the press about this, but they’d have a lawsuit on their hands, and any costs we had to put out, we would sue them for as well in the lawsuit. I sent this in email form to their legal & press depts, along with any other FB email address I could find. Our business page was returned to us within 24 hours.

In this case, we’re not paying for FB advertising, but as some people have pointed out, they are, and what FB is doing is fraud if you are paying to get likes and they won’t let you contact them. I suggest that the more people who fight & protest FB on this, the more likely & quicker they will have to change their policy.

They stwich off my gruop and i cant post anythingh ,, so all that work is lost specially  the bussiness part of it,, it feels like a dictator is running the show, they say when and how can you use facebook,, it took me a while to come to facebook now  regret it,,

I deeply despise facebook. we spent all this money advertising fan pages that have been rendered completely useless -except for appearance – when actually talking to your fans.. I am ready for another social media platform completely! Google+ maybe!

Seeing this way late but great post. We’ve been working on an app that could help convert Facebook fans into mobile subscribers. You can check it out at: http://mofans.co/

As an online promotions adviser I’ve noticed a huge decrease in the number of small businesses wanting to generate facebook pages, simply for the fact they no longer have the option of a landing tab, or welcome page.

I simply can’t understand why facebook would take this option away, just a few weeks after making this easier by replacing fbml with html for landing tabs.