Why Is Facebook Making Social Media Longer & Harder?

I am sure I am not the only one who has noticed, but Facebook has left the world of convenience, and now seems to be creating systems that make it longer and harder to get things accomplished, and thus improving their stats in a very unsocial manner. But with Facebook being the current “King” of social media platforms, we gotta do what we gotta do, and spend more and more time blindly following the pied piper, and less time balancing on other social networks, especially those that FB deems competitive.

This could be happening because Facebook, like any business, needs numbers to show. To their investors, to their advertisers, and to the media at large. For example, remember the days when you could act as your business page on Facebook and go jumping from page to page, supporting other businesses in your community? Well those days are gone. Now you have to go to each page as your individual self (that’s one click or page impression), and then change over to your business under the post that you want to interact with (that’s another click or page impression). So what used to be a one page visit, is now turned into at least a two page visitor scenario. A hassle for users, but great when it comes to Facebook numbers, showing more impressions and time on the pages.

The Facebook mobile app for business is another area of concern, for users at least. Sometimes I wonder if the folks behind the scenes, developing these apps, have ever actually used them enough to actually gauge their effectiveness. Because if so, we would not have many issues and so many other cool solutions would be implemented before we had the chance to think about them. For example, when another business mentions your business on Facebook, you cannot even view the post where they mentioned your company. You have to either go to your personal Facebook app, find the business page that mentioned you, and then still you cannot respond or interact as your business. So then you have to go to your desktop or laptop and login, and then go to your business page, then go to your notifications, find the post, and like & respond from there. Now, as of the other day, you cannot even pull up a business page on the Facebook personal app and go directly to it from the search bar. You have to search for the business name first, then they bring you to search result page, and you can then click on the business page from there. Ring Around The Rosie! How many impressions and page views does Facebook get from running us in circles like this? Lots! Come on Facebook, you are a billion dollar company, and there is no reason at all why your mobile app for business should be anything less than incredible. Unless, you want it that way.

Lets talk about Facebook and YouTube for a minute. We all know the war that was started years ago when Google tried to become social and Facebook tried to become a search engine. Google ended up failing terribly with their “Wave” social media platform. Then later on they made an even bigger blunder by forcing everyone that had a Google account to get a Google + Page, and then using those statistics to claim that Google + was the next big thing. Meanwhile, while Google was distracted, Facebook started planting their video seed, and it has since grown roots enough that YouTube is just about a thing of the past. And on top of that, Facebook has now entered the “Search” world, more of a social search instead of a search engine, and is now a big threat to the Google search box we fell in love with years ago. Maybe you have already noticed, but over the past year or so, the majority of times you click on a YouTube post from Facebook, it will not take you to the video. They can call it a glitch, but I believe it is more about Facebook blocking you from leaving their website, forcing you to forget about clicking over to that video, and find something else to do on their platform.

That brings me to Facebook Videos. When they first started, they let you upload a video and add a call to action, where someone could watch the video and then click over to a website or some place for more information. Facebook has since removed that, because they do not want you leaving their social media platform. They could have at least allowed the call to action buttons to go to a Facebook page that you designate, but no, because that would compete with their ad revenue model for page promotions. So for now, we have to manually add a link into the description of each video post.

I don’t know about you, but I am starting to feel that Facebook is not my friend anymore, and that social connection is about to be lost. It’s kind of like we lost the spark of when we first fell in love. We tried to get back together to make it work, but as of right now, my relationship status with you is complicated. Am I going to run out and start my own social network? No, but I hope your strategists find a better way to help us connect and save time, instead of watching us work harder for less results.