I am as much a Facebook Junkie as the next, but over the past few months I have found myself spending less and less time in the actual stream and more in private Facebook groups. This is because I have found specific private groups to be much more valuable to my business than just my public news stream. Last night however, I took some time to read through the stream of my friends and when I did, I kept coming across quoted images or graphics similar to the one above.
Now, I understand why people make these, but I really don’t see any value in them for a person sharing it. The reason people create these is due to the fact that Facebook’s edgerank algorithm places more emphasis on photos as that is overwhelmingly the most popular thing for people to view, comment & share on Facebook. This was made obvious to me by the incredible popularity a photo of my daughter received the other day. (97 likes & 43 comments & growing) So, marketers learned that if they create quotes into an image instead of just plain text update it is more likely to be viewed by people and receive interactions and popularity they want.
But, what I have noticed lately that these quoted images are taking over the Facebook stream. They get thousands of shares, comments, & likes. But, they go against everything that Facebook was designed to do. Facebook was created to give people a place to share images of each other & connect with people you know. Unfortunately marketers have come in and are ruining this concept with these images.
I may be alone on this, but I feel like this new trend is making Facebook feel a little bit like MySpace where people spammed your comments with stupid images and shared things they found on another profile and thought was cute or funny. Luckily, Facebook doesn’t allow animated GIF’s (yet) so we don’t have to worry about the sparkling princess fairy just yet.
What do you think? Do you feel these new quotes are junking up the Facebook stream and making it feel a little bit like MySpace?
I continue to observe the “Myspacification” of Facebook, and find that I am spending more and more time on Google+ and much less on FB.
Joe, I just can’t seem to get into the G+ The number of meme’s shared there is quite ridiculous at times too.
Jeremy, that was my major objection when I started using G+. Working the Google+ circles to get a cleaner, more relevant stream takes a little bit of effort, but the benefits are well worth it. I am recommending Guy Kawasaki’s e-book to all my FB friends. He makes the best case for G+ that I have seen and also offers useful “how to”
Can’t you simply unclick the posts that show up in your news feed and say “Don’t show me these types of posts” … I guess it could be viewed as painful that you have to teach facebook what you want to see, but I’ve been doing so consistently since that feature was added and I find the news feed much more relevant than before.
But Chris, won’t that remove most images that show up in your feed then? Images are my favorite thing on FB, just not when it’s all quotes.