5 Important Facebook Changes From the Past That Digital Marketers Need To Know About
Article by Matthew Robinson
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Even since its release by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, Facebook has gone on to be one of the most successful social media companies of the new millennium and led to the later boom of social media. However, Facebook has gone through several changes in recent years. And these changes range from their algorithm to the sign-in process, to the display/viewing of certain content. Here are just a few of the changes that have been made to Facebook in the past 5 years.
Changes to the News Feed Algorithm
In August of 2017, Facebook updated its News Feed algorithm that essentially limited the number of posts. At the time, there was a small group of people that were constantly sharing story links around which had a negative effect on the algorithm. And so, the updates were implemented in order to reduce and de-emphasize any article that could be considered spam, click-bait, or the like. While it did accomplish just that, it also affected the efforts of social media marketing by setting limits and boundaries of what can make it through to the feed. It will also deem any post with a lot of negative feedback as ?less authentic?.
The YouTube Video Automatic Sharing feature has been disabled.
On YouTube, there is a feature where you can set up your videos to be posted to Facebook the second that you upload it. At least that?s how it used to be. But as of 2019, they no longer include this feature. While it still allows you to post a video link, it is no longer automatic. This can contribute to a downward spiral in the number of views and channel traffic. And even though posting can be done manually, it also makes the process of attracting more views and/or subscribers much more tedious.
The Video Creation Kit now allows people to turn photos into videos.
Facebook has recently added a new feature exclusively for mobile devices that allow users to turn their already existing photos into mobile-optimized videos. This feature includes an easy-to-use template and a text feature. This new Video Creation Kit will lead to an increase not only in the viewing ability of videos on the mobile app, but the quality as well.
Facebook is implementing a stricter ad targeting.
In early July of 2018, Facebook realized that advertisers increasing the targeting capabilities of their ads were also putting the user?s privacy at risk in the process. So, in order to protect user privacy, Facebook started implementing a much stricter ad targeting system. Essentially what this does is make sure that the user consents to receive certain ads. The user only receives ads that come from a reliable source and also allow for transparency about certain brands and the information on those brands.
Users now have more control over their own data.
People desire control over their data, they want to see who is able to view it and want to be able to delete it. In July of 2018, Facebook granted the user?s wish by implementing a new set of data history tools. Not only are users are now able to clear out their history and see the analytics for their posts, but they are also now able to store more data. However, being able to delete history would make it more difficult for marketers to target ads and demographics.
