Social Technology | JΛΠIMUZΞ ヤニムズ

(*sigh*). Yes, another rant on Crapbook… I know, I know… “get a life already“.

I recently read this article about how Facebook has changed it’s logarithms for what it decides is shown in your news feed. How it tailors your feed based on what it thinks you find most interesting, gives each post a calculated “rank” and all the different factors that go into calculating that. And of course, where there’s ranking logarithms there’s SEO marketers trying to figure out how to spam content into your feed, in front of your face, regardless of whether you might actually be interested or not. After all, that is the ultimate goal of marketing, right?

Now, I’m not talking about the ads that are shown along side your feed. I’m talking about the content that actually finds it’s way into your feed. This can come in two forms: “suggested posts”, pages you have never before “liked” but Facebook’s filters thinks you would, and filtering in or out posts from pages you have liked and even posts your real life friends make. The later being what actually puts me off.

Yes, your Facebook news feed is a highly filtered and calculated list. I’ve sometimes noticed that I haven’t seen any recent posts from a particular person and I start to wonder, “huh, I wonder what happened to Joe Smith? Is He dead?” So, I pop on over to his page only to find out that nope, he’s very much alive and has been posting all sorts of things, I just haven’t been seeing them in my feed. You see, Facebook selectively filters your friends list to show posts from the last 50 people you’ve interacted with, then selects posts from other friends based on the content and whether Facebook thinks it’s something you might be interested in.

I assume this is done to make more room for those suggested posts you might be interested in. Well, in fact you’re probably not interested and, in fact, may be downright against. This is a complaint I hear allot from friends and people I follow. The vegan who, because she liked some page related to food, gets span for the local steak house. The person who posted some comment on a political figures page whom their against, now gets suggestions to like pages from that group. Yeah, no thank you.

Facebook apparently looks at up to 100,000 different criteria when deciding what to put into your feed in order to create the “best newspaper in the world” (Zuckerbergs quote). Seriously, it does not need to be this complicated. If that is really your goal Zuckerberg, then it really comes down to these simple rules:

Show me posts from the pages I like. Stop trying to figure out if I would like it or not. If I liked the page, chances are I will like what they are posting. If not, let me decide to block them.
If I friend someone, show me their posts. Usually I don’t friend someone if I don’t want to keep up somewhat with what they are up to. This might not include just the last 50 people I’ve interacted with either. Again, if someone is posting things I don’t want to see, I’ll go ahead and block them on my own, thanks.

Twitter is an example of a working version of this (I really wish more of my close friends were on there). If I follow someone, I see all their posts. If I follow a product, I see those posts. Granted, this means that if I follow more than a couple dozen accounts then my feed can be rather huge. However, twitter offers lists, allowing you to group various accounts together (you don’t even have to be following the accounts in the group) to organize those tweets that you really want to see versus those that just fill up your feed. The thing here is, and where it is better than Facebook, I get to decide who goes in what list. And yes, Facebook also allows you to create groups but it is primarily for applying privacy settings to the posts you make, and feeds in those lists are still subject to filtering.

All in all, I think it’s time I really put more of my online social energies into Google+. Of course, it has it’s own set of issues.

What you should know about Facebook’s News Feed algorithm (girlwiththemarketingdegree.wordpress.com)
Facebook’s News Feed Ranking Uses 100,000 Weighing Factors (news.softpedia.com)
What the Latest Facebook News Feed Changes Mean for Your Business (socialmediatoday.com)

It’s been a while coming now. Crackbook used to be fun – make a few new friends, re-connect with old ones… talk real topics, have conversations… collaborate both professionally and socially… could personalize your profile with the crap you liked, interact with both those that shared your internists, or “politely” (*ahem*) flame those that didn’t. It wasn’t really any better than MySpace, except that it had games! Aww yah, games?! I’m in! And well, several projects I was working on at the time linked with social media, so originally my crackbook account was just a test for things I was working on. Little did I know how it would grow, and grow it did…

At the time, it was great! But these days, it just seems to be the same repetitive posts of mostly the same old carp. Because it’s not about the content anymore, but how many “hits” they can get to their page … their linked site where they can collect those links into ad revenue… It sucks now.

Anyway… I don’t mean to bitch… well actually I do! But alas, I am looking for a new place where my online identity can reside outside of crackbook. I’ve tried Live Journal (again), sucks now. Most other “blog” sites do to, so I’m trying out wordpress… will see.

So, what I will likely post here will be geeky stuff. Tech tutorials, game stuff, interesting science facts, with a bit of … er, maybe Anime, *good* movies… perhaps some good TV (though, hard to find these days). If you like anything I post here, then follow me here or on Twitter, my new home. Otherwise, move along, nothing to see here… 😛

Thankfully, there is only one person following this post atm… I’ll promise better in the future!