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Comment by osolo | Hacker News Reader

Facebook's trying to double dip. They want you to pay to get your fans and pay again when you want to market to them. It's nothing short of a scam.

I think that this stunt will increase Facebook's profits in the short term, mainly because of businesses that have already invested in building their pages. Longer term, however, we'll definitely see a shift to direct email marketing.

Once you have someone's email, you own that relationship and there's no gatekeeper to charge you for every interaction. As business start realizing valuing of the direct relationship, Facebook will start taking a hit, and rightfully so.

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>I think that this stunt will increase Facebook's profits in the short term, mainly because of businesses that have already invested in building their pages. Longer term, however, we'll definitely see a shift to direct email marketing.

That's right, nothing prevents current small businesses to post a last one paid facebook post telling the followers : "Subscribe to our mailing list here to get the exclusive offers"

But the key problems could be :

1 - People prefer browsing on Facebook than on their email client

2 - As a small business owner, creating posts on Facebook is easy, whereas creating nice emails that looks good isn't as easy. Getting feedback on these offers (Facebook Likes+Comments vs. nothing) is also a main problem for email marketing

> It's nothing short of a scam.

How's that supposed to work? Frankly, Facebook is a business that doesn't have your small business' interests at heart. Never has, never will. We've shouted from the roof-tops to never build solely on a third-party platform, and now non-tech businesses are going to learn that lesson. But, this is Facebook; they're not a benevolent entity, and they don't owe you or your business squat. Saying they're "double-dipping" or are a "scam" is ludicrous.

I absolutely agree with your points. Except I still agree with the parent as well. It is a scam because FB built a platform and marketed it to businesses as a way to build their fan base and communicate with them. FB then turned around and changed the rules of the game. That's called a bait and switch.

Very few companies behave this way (offer something for free then turn around one day and charge for it--drug dealers come to mind as the only business that does this). Those companies that do treat their customers to bait and switch tactics usually don't stick around for long. FB rightly so has lost the trust of their business users, so I hope this turns out badly for FB as I don't want this behaviour to become the norm for business.

I agree with your points, too. I think I wasn't clear, I feel that Facebook's behaviour is deplorable, I just don't find it surprising is all :)

Also, somewhat off-topic but

> drug dealers come to mind as the only business that does this

Drug dealers don't even do that themselves (product is too expensive and it takes while to become an addict, and even then it's not guaranteed revenue)!

Lol. So, FB comes out worse in comparison to drug dealers.

I agree with you that it isn't surprising because it seems to be in FB's DNA to perform bait and switch like tactics (privacy policies come to mind as well). I wonder if that DNA spreads to their business internals (e.g. treatment of staff, inter-departmental agreements, etc)

Ehm while I disagree with the practice it feels like standard protocol at the intersection when successfull start-up becomes a business. To single FB out then seems out of place.

What I see from startups are adding new premium features to pay for. I can't recall a successful startup that's done a bait and switch like FB. I'm genuinely interested in a few examples (I'm sure there are plenty, I just can't think of any off the top of my head).

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