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Comment by danenania | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a big Facebook fan or anything, but this seems like a predictable development. A user's attention and newsfeed real estate are limited resources, while the number of pages they've liked increases with time. If ALL business pages reached a large percentage of their followers for free, the typical newsfeed would be inundated with promotions. It's a natural monetization point--Facebook makes more money (which is the main purpose of Facebook), and their users are insulated from seeing too much marketing content.

If you want to reach people reliably, build a funnel that you control. Facebook/google/service X can all be valuable components of this funnel, but none of them should be the foundation.

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But as a user, I find it frustrating. There are companies that I follow because I want to see their news updates. I want them to advertise to me. That's one of facebook's major functions - following people you like and getting their news updates. Well if one of the "people you like" owns a local business and you want to follow his page in addition to hismelf? Unfortunately, you don't get to see the updates unless he pays facebook.

I get why facebook does it and I really can't blame them, but as a user I'm disappointed that I can't fiddle with the knobs and say "I really actually seriously like this business and want to see every update of theirs".

You can opt in to get a notification for all posts from a given page you've liked: https://www.facebook.com/help/299284303519326

A lot of people don't realize that if your business relies completely on someone else's then you aren't going to get very large.

Yes it is worse than that, the small biz owner can have the plug pulled on him at any time. Even if he is paying for the advertising - e.g. adwords ban!

What she should do now is get as many email addresses as possible from her existing customers and likers of her page, and have an e-zine or followup. This could be in conjunction with a blog. All stuff that is in her control and cannot so easily be pulled away.

Does ANYBODY even open emails like that though? I know I never do.

Yeah, some people do. I ignore a lot of them but I always read through the newsletter from my tea store. It's like tea porn and even though I order infrequently I like seeing the pictures.

It depends.

Sure if it is sell, sell, sell people will hit the unsubscribe button.

If it is useful information, building a relationship with the reader, maybe the occasional reference to a sold product. Then this may work.

Well, you might. Mafia wars, etc. You just run the risk of being cut off from your userbase at any time.

True, I should have phrased that as "it is not a good idea to grow large if you rely entirely on another company"

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