It’s not a coincidence that Facebook first half profits doubled to $1.6B and the trend will likely accelerate. Over the past few years Facebook has been slowly but steadily paving the way for increased profitability
For the past three or so years, most of the changes Facebook has implemented have made it made it increasingly difficult for organization and brands to put their content in front of their “Fans” or as Facebook now calls them “Likes”
It started with the structure of the wall on profiles. We first saw the wall being segregated in two sets of posts with the default view to what Facebook deemed most important to users to the last change in the past month.
The latest little known or noticed change in Facebook “Pages” has big implications. As of September 30, 2011, Facebook stopped allowing pages to communicate to their “Fans” or as Facebook calls them “Likes” via messaging.
The feature that allowed page owners or administrators to send targeted messages into users’ inboxes has been removed, officially to , and i quote : ” connect with your audience in the most effective ways possible” which is through public communication on the wall.
So Facebook says. In reality, it’s been a slow and calculated approach to remove free means of communications between pages and their followers and quoting facebook again, “using targeted Facebook Ads or Sponsored Stories to help grow and highlight your message within the Facebook experience“.
If the past is any indication, we can expect that Facebook will find more ways to curtail free interactions between pages and users as an incentive to use paid Facebook advertising, coming around full circle, back to traditional advertising, only this time with a captive audience…. of advertisers.
