Mark Zuckerberg Is Either Dishonest Or Delusional Yet Again And An Opportunity For STEEM
He is not stupid, so it's much more likely that he's just dishonest.
As I mentioned in a recent post about Facebook and cryptocurrency, Mark Zuckerberg has been spouting all kinds of noble babble about his company and its imagined mission. Generic stuff like connecting the world, togetherness and I don't know what. But while his been talking empty platitudes, Facebook are on a mission that has nothing to do with their generic mission statements.
Before I delve into Mark Zuckerberg's latest insincerities, let me talk a bit about the background.
Facebook's Business Model
Facebook has a very clear business model. They want as many people as possible to be on their network and they want them to stay for as long as possible. This allows them to learn a huge deal about each user and then allows them to sell laser-targeted advertising which businesses love and are happy to spend a lot of money on. This is so profitable and successful because of the huge amount of data that Facebook has on people's interests and identities. This makes targeted advertising quite efficient for the advertiser who pays for access to the exact type of people who are potential customers. The advertiser gets great ROI while Facebook manages to keep the prices high. For Facebook big data and user addiction are a science.
Facebook Pages
Something that Facebook did early on try and entice businesses to come to their platform was allow them to create Facebook pages. On those pages business could start cultivating a following which could be turned into customers. Of course, it was not only businesses that created Facebook pages, but all kinds of individuals who just wanted to run a fan page on their favorite topic, celebrity, show or whatever. This was great for Facebook because businesses were getting used to being part of their social network, there was all kinds of content posted from pages that kept users on the platform and most importantly, it allowed Facebook to learn a lot about what each user was actually interested in. And let's not forget that this is the information they are really selling to advertisers besides the generic stuff like location, gender and age.
Of course, many of those pages are also hurting the bottom line of the company as they siphon out users to media sites or turn Facebook users into clients for free without having to pay for advertising. So naturally, Mark and co. have gradually been decreasing the ability of pages to reach their audiences giving all kinds of excuses and explanations. But it's clear that the less business and media outlets can achieve for free, the more some of them are going to spend on advertising. Sure, many will be disgruntled and some might even leave the platform, but on the whole, their advertising revenue is going to go up because of that.
Mark Zuckerberg Pretending to Care About Our Well-Being
Keeping all of that context in mind, let's look at Mark Zuckerberg's latest post about how they want to make Facebook nicer for the users. Let's see a few quotes:
To me it's 100% clear that this move is part of a long-term strategy to boost profits. Facebook is not cutting down on the reach of Facebook pages because they are bad for people or because people don't want to hear from them, but because by allowing pages to reach people, Facebook are leaking potential profits. It's a corporation that understands data and understands optimization. They have managed to make their advertising product one of the most popular ones on the market and they know that after expansion, it's time for optimization. All of this is about cutting the free-loaders out inevitably converting a portion of them to advertisers.
An Opportunity for STEEM
There are all kinds of online media outlets and there is a subset of them who have built up a large following on social media with Facebook being their primary traffic source. They range in size from huge ones like BuzzFeed to geeky little blogs full of awesome content. A lot of those outlets, bloggers and content creators and going to have their livelihoods endangered or destroyed by those changes that Facebook are going to implement this year.
They are obviously going to be looking for alternatives and a decentralized immutable blockchain where you can be paid directly by your audience could not only sound like a good solution for many of them, but actually be the best solution they have available. But if we want to take advantage of this growth opportunity, we need to make sure that they learn about it. And SMTs will only add even more value the what the STEEM blockchain could offer them.
On top of this, I do think there is a good way to not only attract some media outlets to our blockchain, but also advertisers, but I'm going to save that for one of my next posts.
As usual, you are directly on point. Thank you for addressing this. Of what you said, this is what I would like to expound upon:
I know this to be true personally, because I've been experiencing it over the last two years. A page will spend quite a bit of time trying to amass a sizable amount of followers through engaging posts, only to have a smaller portion of those followers at any given time even be SENT said posts, paid or otherwise. It's one thing if they get sent and then people don't see or interact with them. It's quite another when those posts are never sent at all.
All because their servers can't take the strain. Or because people are complaining about seeing too much marketing posts in their feeds. Blah, blah, blah.
As you say, Zuckerburg and company are not stupid, so the only other alternative is, they never intended Facebook to be a marketing tool for businesses, period, and while they entertained the notion, they no longer want it. You advertise through them. That's it. No more pretending.
Thank you for the thoughtful comment!
Facebook are still a really powerful marketing tool for businesses, but they are less and less of a tool that one could use for free. If you are an online store, you could still afford to advertise and with a positive ROI, that wouldn't bother you too much as you would still be making money. But a media outlet could never afford to advertise so people would see their content.
I'm pretty annoyed with fbook at the moment as I seem to have been blacklisted for posting steemit articles to my wall. Literally overnight, I went from receiving likes + comments on 90% of my posts to nothing. This coincidence ;-) happened the day after I posted a steemit article to my wall. Hmmnnnnn, is it possible that fbook are censoring artists + writers simply because they are sharing posts from a platform that could potentially take away a large part of their market share in the future? You are completely right about Zuckerberg @rocking-dave, he is a liar and a hypocrite + only interested in 2 things $ and himself. Gr8 article
Facebook are an annoying platform and a very centralized one. I don't think they involve themselves with intentionally censoring competitors, but it's absolutely possible that the domain steemit.com might have been blacklisted there due to spam or scam reports. It's quite possible that unfaithful spammy people might have tried to promote their steemit acricles in spammy ways which migth have lead to the domain being burned on there. I haven't checked what's the case and status. But as bad as Facebook are, intentionally doing something like this is too much of a potential liability and possibly grounds for a lawsuit.
Try sharing your articles from the steem blockchain with a link from a different interface like busy.org or something even more obscure (you'll have to search for that) and you might have better luck.
I tried using bitylinks but haven't tried busy + I do use busy to publish all my posts as I find the editors preview window is better as I have all kinds of plugins running on steemit. I shall try sharing the links from busy from now on and see how it goes. Cheers for the advice :)
It's spot-on about Facebook's corporate pages, first free, and then Facebook attempting to profit from it.
In between the lines a lot of his post is about Snap. If all Zberg cared about was making the world a better place, then just let Snap do its thing, no? It's not like Zberg improved Snap's "Stories" features, he simply copied it. Does that somehow make the world a better place, or is it simply motivated an attempt to squash a rival like a jealous girlfriend?
We think alike, and here's some of our material on same subject we think will help shine more light on subject...
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@harpooninvestor/mark-zuckerberg-now-fears-steemit
We do agree on a lot, but I do not think Zuck really fears steemit just yet, we might not even be on his radar. We have the potential to disrupt social media as a whole, but it's still to early for us to be claiming that we are. In the end, we don't have to destroy Facebook to be successful and to thrive anyway.
I am amazed to read this article because after reading this article my mind becomes open. I am aware, I have been too closed with new things and feel already know. It affected me that I became a Sok Tahu
This article reminds me to keep digging and keep searching for information and new things.
Thanks for sharing
I'm glad you found this interesting! :)
I gave you some lovin How bout you give me some too?
great post
Absolutely true, Steemit Platform can be prove great opportunity for many, but word should be spread because still Steemit Platform has to reach many. Thanks for sharing.
Have a great day and stay blessed.
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