Facebook was never as popular as it became in 2012, and without any doubts, this social network got a terrific boost in 2012. It was just a year back that Facebook was all set with its new strategies to grow its network at a faster pace and launched its Facebook Timeline that was welcomed with mixed feelings by the audience. Hate it or love it, Facebook Timeline has contributed largely in generating good revenue for the Facebook team. It was the same year when Mark Zuckerberg tied his wedding knots, adding further crisp to the Facebook Charm, it was rumored that this largest social media would end in no later than July 2012.
With the start of 2013, many analysts are found saying that Facebook’s reign is now coming to an end. It is found that there are following reasons behind this analysis that have somehow affected the popularity of Facebook hugely. Have a look.
1. Personal Promoted Posts
Facebook launches its personal promoted posts in October, allowing users to show their posts more frequently in the news feeds of their friends for a low price of $7. Although a similar feature is been enjoyed by the Brand page owners for the promotions of their brands, regular users didn’t show interest in paying for sharing their photos and posts. Leaving the users under an impression that Facebook is turning into a money monster, Facebook did suffer with a bad business partially.
2. Slaughtering the Sacred Cow: Instagram
Social media updating sites were all overloaded with news of Facebook’s purchase of Instagram in April last year. Although Facebook made a reasonable deal of $1 Billion, it soon devalued to $730 Million, showing that Instagram is on the way of its doom.
3. Instagram vs. Twitter
Purchasing Instagram gave a severe blow to its Twitter popularity as Facebook, its biggest rival, disabled all the links of Instagram with Twitter. This meant that Instagram could no longer propagate as photos in Twitter streams. As the traffic fall for Instagram, Facebook found itself suffering too.
4. New Message Strategies
One of the chief features behind the success of Facebook was the fact that it was the way user wanted it to be. However, along with its professional moves, Facebook added additional features to its messaging, which are taken more as a mess by its users.
It was few months back that Facebook started its “message seen” receipt, that is shown once the receiver sees the message. This means that you cannot your availability from unwanted conversations. Moreover, Facebook has allowed people to send their messages for $1 to anyone who are not your friends. Wow, this can be taken as a serious threat for spamming.
5. EdgeRank Dings Publishers
Brand pages did work great for the media organizations in attracting a huge traffic on Facebook, however, Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm was optimized to equate engagement with relevance, leading to new feed preference for only those items those were able to sustain more likes and comments, resulting in repetition of news which users do not wish to follow after going through it for once!
As compared to 2011, 2012 can be considered, both, productive and destructive for the Facebook team, where the aim of making money has resulted in serious drawback for it. Let us see how things turn out to be for this social network in 2013.
Best Wishes