Wow, this graph is crazy <a href="http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/page-post-reach-graph.png" rel="nofollow">http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/page-pos...</a> The standard deviation is more than twice the average!<p>This is a bit disingenuous: "The launch of Promoted Posts had no impact on the news feed reach of the average Page." And I think this is just wrong: "Sadly, news outlets like Ars Technica that are typically level-headed covered the Dangerous Minds rant as true despite its lack of hard data to back up its anecdotal claim." The linked article says: "Ars' own Facebook page has experienced similar fluctuations: even as likes continue to climb, traffic generated by the page has remained unusually low." So they do, in fact, have data.
This looks like a PR move, nobody knows their algorithm.
Similar situation to Google, what comes on top of the stream?
I mean you pay to manipulate it, so there is no neutrality to begin with.<p>The paid concept is flawed, think about it:<p>You follow 100 Sites/Friends nobody promotes their post.
Now everybody pays to promote their posts for the same amount.<p>Stream looks exactly the same.<p>So Facebook obviously hopes for a race to the top here where everybody pays more to stay up.
Great idea, it will depend on CPA in the end anyway. Seems way too expensive right now.
Interesting... I'm still trying to figure out how a smaller page I like (~2000 likes) and interact with - which I know has very little spam reports has almost completed stopped showing up in my News Feed, yet every time I log in I'm told to Like Mitt Romney.
From a reasonable sized set of people I know who use Facebook Pages they saw a massive downward trend in engagement from people who liked the page at the same time Promoted Posts came in. Complete conjecture as I know a statistically small set of people in comparison to the number of people using Pages, but 30 people with the same issue is a bit of an odd situation.
"Basically if you never click, Like, comment, or share posts by a Page, Facebook made that Page less likely to show up in your feed. Cathcart says “That’s a relatively large change. It resulted in a large decrease in spam reports”, meaning it succesfully made the Facebook news feed better."<p>Following that logic I know a really good way to make the news feed even 'better': don't show any page updates ever. Or even any updates at all.