by Joe Martino
I write this as our FB page with 420,000 fans only has the ability to reach a few thousand people with every post; less than 1% of the fans we worked so hard to acquire.
When Facebook was first starting out years ago, it was a great tool for connecting people. Originally aimed at connecting students, Facebook was a means by which you could stay caught up with old friends and acquaintances. As it got bigger, more and more people were able to join Facebook, effectively creating a platform where people could instantly connect with one another and share information. Soon enough, communities popped up, people with like minds and interests were able to share new bits of information easily and even spread awareness about causes. Facebook became a huge tool in waking people up to various things going on across the world as people in one country could share what the media wouldn’t cover in another country. Users were able to help change the world through Facebook.
Then Facebook went public. The moment any company goes public something happens, money becomes more important than it ever was. Now Facebook had to answer to its shareholders and show revenue increases each year. They needed to constantly grow. The unsustainable model that has destroyed our world in such a big way now made its way into an online tool that was waking people up to everything wrong with the world and what followed is extremely unfortunate. Facebook began limiting what users were able to see as they wanted people to pay for their posts to reach people. Most of this was done to Facebook pages, but it affects everyone.
