Several weeks ago, I penned an “Open Proposal for Facebook.” The reason I wrote the proposal is that I was/am frustrated with the fact that Facebook only shows me a small percentage of what my friends are posting. This frustration was shared amongst most of the people I’d talked to.
I was also frustrated that my church’s posts were only reaching a small fraction of the members who had “liked” the churches page. These members have specifically chosen to like the page so they would get the updates and Facebook is filtering those updates from their newsfeeds…unless the church coughed up some money to show the posts to more people. Again, I spoke to a lot of church admins and business owners who were frustrated with this. So, I proposed a solution…
The Proposal:
I proposed that Facebook offer a way for users to be able to see all the posts that their friends posted and a way for users to see all the posts Pages they had liked posted. Since I wanted the solution to be financially viable for Facebook, I proposed that users and page owners pay a small amount to have this ability.
- Users could opt to pay $1 per month for a premium account that allowed them to see all their friends’ posts.
- Organizations and businesses could pay $10 per month for a premium account to have their posts shown to everyone who had “liked” them.
I didn’t just want to propose the idea, I wanted to know what you thought.
Your Responses / Poll Results
Thank you to everyone who voted and shared their thoughts on the proposal. Here’s what you had to say:
Premium User Accounts – People were pretty split about whether they would pay:
- 36% said they would pay $1/mo to see all their friends’ posts.
- 44% said they would not pay.
- 20% said they didn’t care one way or another.
This actually turned out better than I expected as in the article I only assumed about 10% opt into pay when I said it would generate Facebook $1.31 billion in revenue. If 36% paid, Facebook would generate $4.72 billion and more people would be satisfied with their service. Win win!
Premium Organization Accounts – Here we had overwhelming results.
- 75% said they would be willing to pay $10/mo for people who liked their Facebook Page to see all their posts.
- 12.5% said they would not pay.
- 12.5% said they weren’t sure.
This was right in line with the prediction that most businesses/organizations would be willing to pay $10 to have full exposure for their posts.
What About it Zuckerburg?
Here’s a great way for Facebook to increase satisfaction and possibly increase their bottom line. Here’s hoping somehow this proposal makes it onto Zuckerburg’s desk and he realizes the genius it is 😉
Share Your Thoughts:
- Did the poll turn out the way you thought?
- Do you have any other suggestions for Facebook?
OurChurch.Com Director of Marketing Services
Kurt serves as OurChurch.Com’s Director of Marketing Services, bringing over 20 years of expertise in search marketing, and has developed numerous marketing services and served hundreds of churches, schools, ministries, and businesses.
He has authored more than 500 articles on the subject, contributing to platforms like the Christian SEO Guys blog and Church Marketing University, and is an active participant on LocalSearchForum.com.
In addition to his professional accomplishments, Kurt is an ordained minister, serving as pastor at Faith Lutheran Church in Wesley Chapel, FL, demonstrating his commitment to both faith and community. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree and a Master’s Degree from Georgia Southern University. He also holds a Specific Ministry Pastor Certificate and a General Pastor Certificate from Concordia Seminary.
3 Comments
Kurt, thanks for sharing the survey results. I definitely think there's an opportunity there.
One of the things I wonder about, though, is if 75% of businesses/organizations were paying to have their updates shown to all their followers, that would put a lot more content into people's feeds. Most people probably wouldn't see everything in their feed. So, would businesses be happy paying $10/mo only to find out most people still aren't seeing their updates? It probably depends on the numbers.
That all depends on how many pages a person "likes" and how often those Pages post content. According to StatisticBrain.com, as of July 2014, the average FB user likes 80 pages. That could bring quite a more posts into an average person's newsfeed. However, we also tend to "like" pages on a whim or never unlike pages we are no longer interested in because it doesn't affect our newsfeed. If people started seeing all the posts from the pages they liked, I think they would just be more judicious about what pages they choose to like (or remain liked) and which they choose to see the content from.
Would people be missing some posts? Possibly, but from what I've seen FB users are more apt to scroll back through posts than Twitter users go back through older tweets. So, I also think it's possible that most posts would be seen. Some organizations may see the number of "likes" go down initially as people who weren't really interested in the organization's posts unlike them; however, the number of likes would more accurately reflect the number of people who are really interested in the organization's posts.
Interesting reading. Thank you for the mission s💕🐾💕