You start by saying that Facebook is not a competitor, but in taking over part of your core business--- keeping track of potential customers--- it could be seen as that.
> Secondly, Facebook is an immensely popular communications platform. Even if for some reason you dislike them because they're privately owned, it doesn't change the fact that that's where people are. If you want to reach people, you want to be where they are.
Facebook's objective is total control of all communication and it will stubbornly refuse to allow the migration of its data off platform. It will fight tooth and nail to prevent any other competing alternatives for social communication (such as open ones like email) from being seen as viable. Frankly, that's a business risk for us all, because it moves control of communication into the hands of a third party. By coming down hard in support of them you are doing an important part of their marketing dirty work.
The net benefit for consumers is unclear. They may like it now but we are still in the honeymoon phase of this monopolistic process.
> I mean, I get it. There are some exchanges we both agree that we want to have. You can't make a reliable newsletter via Facebook, nor I would like to get my account info through Messenger. But please move your ad communications to Facebook, where they will be unobtrusive for us and properly curtailed by the platform.
Your support for them is so superlative that I have to ask: Do you have a stake in Facebook?
I never checked it out personally, but from what I heard, Facebook allows for integration with various third-party CRMs and stuff, so you still get to track potential and existing customers to your heart's content.
Your points are valid in a long-term view. Facebook monopolizing communication is not a good thing. But since when do most businesses care about that? It won't affect their bottom-line at all. It's a worry for consumers.
> Your support for them is so superlative that I have to ask: Do you have a stake in Facebook?
I have no stake in Facebook and I'm not affiliated with the company in any way. My support being "so superlative" is because as a user and customer, I hate business communication. Most of the stuff companies send is a waste of time for me, and I value my time. I'd like businesses to use Facebook more precisely because it makes spamming me harder. :). That, and since it's all engineered so that it is in company's interest to allow people to comment on their stuff, suddenly you can communicate with them under public view of other customers - so you won't be ignored so easily when you have a legitimate complaint.
If keeping track of lists of potential customers is such an integral part of your core business that someone else doing it is "competition", then it can be plausibly argued that you're in the spam business, at least to some degree.
No, it wasnt like that when most of the Pages acquired the bulk of their followers, they could reach all their audience freely. It was a shitty idea solely to make money, it didn't "add value" to users. There were other, more meaningful ways to implement this, e.g. show Page posts on a separate tab, have limits of posts/day etc. Paying for views is a bad strategy to improve quality; imagine if HN worked like that.
So for example Facebook pages like "Humans of New York" or "I Fucking Love Science" or "Amy Poehler's Smart Girls" still get popped into a lot of timelines despite (to my knowledge) not paying at all for boosting. Why? Because a lot of people love that content.
But if some other Facebook page saw a huge drop-off that stayed dropped off, then maybe that content is just not as interesting as other pages (like the ones above for example).
And in fact this is why Facebook made changes to page content visibility in the first place. Most pages posted boring obvious ads instead of interesting content.
Pages can still pay for higher visibility, but those are ads. Just like people can pay to "get into the New York Times"--via ads, not articles. And just like the NY Times, there is only a fixed amount of ad inventory at Facebook. Even when pages are paying, Facebook limits their audience, in order to keep the audience happy. No one wants to see a newsfeed full of 100% ads. Or even 50% ads. Or 25%.
Just go and count how many things you've liked so far. I have 821 "items" liked, most of them fanpages. If every one of them would be able to reach me with all their posts, I'd quit Facebook on the spot. The users are not there for the fanpages. That's why Facebook won't let companies hit everyone. Now whether or not they should allow people to pay for wider reach, that's questionable, but then again - it at least makes people prioritize. If you have a limited marketing budget, you will tend to pay for and thus prioritize more important communication.
But then again, Facebook has to get the money for their servers from somewhere (or at least enough of it to attract more investors). They could've chosen worse monetization strategies.
First of all, it doesn't matter. Facebook is not your competitor, so you're not harming yourself.
Secondly, Facebook is an immensely popular communications platform. Even if for some reason you dislike them because they're privately owned, it doesn't change the fact that that's where people are. If you want to reach people, you want to be where they are.
> 2. When people like/follow your page, they are trapped by FB(or some other social media) and you can only reach them there.
Facebook is not trapping anyone inside. If you mean that you can't contact them out-of-band, then well, that's by design and actually a feature.
> If you're banned or they pull bait-and-switch on you, like Facebook did, you've wasted all this time building user base for Facebook and not building your business.
Most businesses come to the rational conclusion that this almost never happens, and the small risk is worth being where the customers are.
> 3. You can't even reach them on Facebook, because you now have to pay Facebook to reach people that have already liked your page.
That is totally by design and again, very much a feature.
For some reasons businesses think they're entitled to "reaching out" to people with their unsolicited offers. They're not. We don't want your spam. Neither your, nor that of any of hundreds of companies we deal with every month. The etiquette here is the Hollywood principle - don't call us, we'll call you.
> 4. Posting on social media wastes a lot of time and money(tools + people).
It's actually simpler than writing quality e-mails, or quality snailmails. There is some additional work because people will reach out to you more through Facebook than through conventional channels, and you need someone to handle the communication.
> - Compare this to getting an email address from your visitors:
> 1. You are in control of your list.
Which is something we, the customers, don't want.
> 2. You can reach them anywhere & anytime almost for free.
And that we absolutely, positively don't want most of the time.
I mean, I get it. There are some exchanges we both agree that we want to have. You can't make a reliable newsletter via Facebook, nor I would like to get my account info through Messenger. But please move your ad communications to Facebook, where they will be unobtrusive for us and properly curtailed by the platform.