Mark Cuban is angry. The Dallas Mavericks owner and tech entrepreneur is lashing out at Facebook for filtering the messages he directs to the Mavericks’ 2.3 million followers. The thing is, he’s part of the problem on Facebook, not the solution — and if anything, should be filtered more, not less.
It’s easy to cast Facebook as the villain in this story. The Mavericks have amassed a big following for their Facebook page, but can’t reach all their followers unless they buy “promoted posts” advertising from Facebook. Making the process feel even more extortionate, Facebook has a prominently placed widget that clearly shows how much should be spent to reach various percentages of followers. Cuban, for example, would have to spend around $3,000 on promoted posts if he wants a good shot at putting a particular message in front of half of the people who follow the Mavericks page.
“Why would we invest in extending our Facebook audience size if we have to pay to reach them?” Cuban told ReadWrite. “That's crazy.”
Cuban is hardly the only Facebook page owner who thinks filtering of posts is madness. Author Ryan Holiday, the blog Dangerous Minds, and Star Trek star George Takei have all criticized the filtering in recent months.
When Facebook’s News Feed changes bled the company of Zynga revenue, few questioned them. But now that the changes are encouraging advertising, users smell a conspiracy.But Facebook’s system is actually pretty rational if you put it in context. The “News Feed” Cuban wants to push his Mavericks posts into has been a selective cross-section of potentially relevant data from friends, family, and interests since its launch in 2006. The algorithm has loosened and tightened over the years, but people have always tried to game it, as evidenced by this five-year-old article on “News Feed Optimization.”
This year is one in which the News Feed algorithm has been tightening, at least when it comes to content from Facebook pages like the one run by Cuban’s Mavericks. Users were complaining that pages clogged their feeds with spammy promotions, Facebook says.
There is historic precedent for this sort of tightening: Facebook has previously made it harder for videogames and video-sharing apps to promote themselves in the News Feed over similar spam complaints. This tightening actually cut into Facebook’s bottom line by robbing partners, especially game-maker Zynga, of new users who might otherwise buy virtual goods using Facebook’s payment system.
When Facebook’s News Feed changes bled the company of Zynga revenue, few questioned the alterations. But now that the changes are encouraging page owners to buy advertising, potentially spiking Facebook profits, users smell a conspiracy. Their fears only grow when they see Wall Street pressuring Facebook to accelerate growth.
In the case of the Mavericks page, it’s hard to get to excited on behalf of billionaire Cuban. Take a look at the page; recent posts are mostly game updates, promotions for local businesses, and promotions for Mavericks specials and games. Even the game updates and player pictures include advertisements, promoting Mavericks sponsors like Pannini America, Albertson’s and BBVA Compass, often placed before the actual content.
In other words, Cuban wants to blast his ads into all his followers’ News Feeds -- for free -- even when Facebook’s software decides a follower isn’t particularly interested. To him, Facebook is the bad guy standing between him and the Mavericks’ eager fans, who yearn for posts about “sizzling specials” from On The Border Mexican Grill and other sponsors. “The Mavs are considering moving to Tumblr or to new MySpace as primary site,” he has tweeted.
Of course, the huge number of users Cuban wants to reach aren’t on Tumblr or MySpace, where posts are unfiltered; they’re on Facebook, where Cuban and his staff have to work harder – or pay more – to get in people’s faces. In his comments on Twitter and to ReadWrite, it doesn’t seem to occur to Cuban that Facebook users like that the social network quietly filters some Mavericks posts from their feeds. It’s not like unfiltered Mavericks promotional copy is particularly hard to find. If Cuban wants to get mad at someone for keeping his content obscure, he should blame the people who write it or the people who refuse to enthusiastically consume it – not Facebook for accurately labeling it as advertorial, and pricing its distribution accordingly.
