An interesting (and potentially disturbing) article from Mike Elgan may help explain why you don’t see as much activity from some of your Facebook friends as you might expect:
Every action you take on Facebook — clicking “Like,” commenting, sharing, etc. — is called an “Edge” internally at Facebook. Each Edge is weighted differently according to secret criteria.
What you need to know is that relationships and content that don’t get enough “Edges” will get “edged” out of existence. Facebook will cut your ties to people — actually end the relationships you think you have — and block content that doesn’t earn enough Edge points.
For example, many Facebook friendships exist solely through reading each other’s Status Updates. An old friend or co-worker talks about a new job, shares a personal triumph like reaching a weight-loss goal, and tells a story on Mother’s Day about how great his mom is. He posts and you read. You feel connected to his life.
Without telling you, Facebook will probably cut that connection. Using unpublished criteria, Facebook may decide you don’t care about the person and silently stop delivering your friend’s posts. Your friend will assume you’re still reading his updates. You’ll assume he’s stopped posting.
Any friends who fail to click or comment on your posts will stop getting your status updates, too. If you have 500 friends, your posts may be actually delivered to only 100 of them. There’s no way for you to know who sees them and who doesn’t.
I don’t use Facebook too often: certainly not every day. My Twitter updates are echoed to Facebook (but not retweets), so I don’t find it surprising that I haven’t seen everyone’s status updates lately: I just assume they’ve scrolled too far down the page by the time I get around to opening Facebook. This article implies that I never had the chance to see many of these status updates because they have “Edged” out of my feed.
I don’t use Facebook, so I am not living on the edge.
I do make occasional use of YouTube (How else would I see Rowan Atkinson?) and have noticed that YouTube now brings up videos “because you watched”, presumably based on my past interests.
I dislike this intensely, because in the short term, YouTube has the capability of narrowing my viewing to, say, Rowan Atkinson, John Cleese and NASCAR crashes, inhibiting my creative urge to seek new interests, while in the long term, the day after I die, someone will be puzzled as to why YouTube is offering me smutty porn. For free.
Comment by Chris Greaves — May 11, 2011 @ 10:50
Yes, the original article called out more culprits in the silent customization scam: it’s not seen as a problem by most users . . . for many of them, it’s a boon. It provides them with a view of the available content defined and (often) constrained by the user’s past interests.
Remember, lots of internet users don’t necessarily want the kind of interactive experience that early adopters might prefer: if all you want is a replacement for (or supplement to) TV, this kind of customization will work well for you.
Comment by Nicholas — May 11, 2011 @ 14:30
Our content management system at work does the same thing: search for information ONCE, and it assumes that that’s all you are ever interested in. I searched for “blown cap” once, and now all I ever see is support issues on blown capacitors. And our CMS is, of course, social-media aware — so it forwarded my “blown cap” keyword search to every wiki-, wookie-, twit-, tweet- and twat-enabled search plugin it could find. The results from GIS were particularly amusing (except to, perhaps, the ladies in HR; my disciplinary hearing is scheduled for next week).
I find the outrage that erupts over Facebook’s latest evil intentions to be amusing, and not particularly surprising. It’s amusing to see how embittered people become when a free service decides to change the rules of engagement in what is probably an attempt to address their own traffic and bandwidth concerns. Yes, you have 500 fellow travellers on your fiends list — but is Facebook really legally required to spam the 490 of them with whom you have no real contact? “But the contract is implied!” the Facebook user says, bitterly clinging to his religion (social media) and shotgun (Facebook wall). Perhaps, hipster dude, if you were paying for the service, you might have something about which to rant and wet yourself. Until you are paying for the thing, shut your non-contributing hole. And get off my damn lawn, while you’re at it.
Comment by Lickmuffin — May 11, 2011 @ 16:05