It’s always sad when a relationship goes south. In the case of Eat24 and Facebook, it appears to be a variation on an old story: Both parties just grew apart after an algorithm came between them.
In a blog post, Eat24, a food delivery company, totally places the blame on Facebook: “We’d love to say ‘It’s not you, it’s us,’ but it’s totally you. Not to be rude, but you aren’t the smart, funny social network we fell in love with several years back. You’ve changed. A lot.”
The marketer then goes on to repeat an oft-leveled charge at Facebook: That it is bilking brands by hiding status updates from followers, thus forcing them to buy ads. (Facebook has repeatedly denied this.) After googling, Eat24 found that lots of marketers were making the same claim:
That means your algorithm is saying most of our friends don’t care about sushi porn, that they aren’t interested in hearing our deepest thoughts about pizza toppings. Are you listening to yourself? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? You know that all those people clicked ‘Like’ on our page because it’s full of provocatively posed burritos and cheese puns, right?
The company also charged that Facebook’s algorithm is sidelining its attempt to become more of a real-time news resource. Noting the response to Ellen DeGeneres’ selfie, the post observes:
Not to hit below the belt, but we have a lot more fun when we hang out with Twitter and Instagram. They don’t have weird algorithms, which means all of our besties get to see everything we post. You might have noticed that when Ellen decided to take a selfie of beautiful people being beautiful, she did it on Twitter. And she got so many RTs, she broke it. The whole site went down. When was the last time you got that much action?
In response, Brandon McCormick, a Facebook rep posted a defense:
Hey Eat24, this is Brandon over at Facebook. I was bummed to read your letter. The world is so much more complicated than when we first met – it has changed. And we used to love your jokes about tacquitos and 420 but now they don’t seem so funny. There is some serious stuff happening in the world and one of my best friends just had a baby and another one just took the best photo of his homemade cupcakes and what we have come to realize is people care about those things more than sushi porn (but if we are in the mood for it, we know where to find it Eat24!). So we are sorry that we have to part this way because we think we could still be friends – really we do. But we totally respect you if you need some space.
Eat24 claims it will delete its Facebook page at 11:59 p.m. ET on Monday. At this writing, the page had close to 71,000 Likes. Ironically, the post looks like one of Eat24’s most popular ever, with 2,100 Likes (versus a range of about a dozen to 150 Likes for other updates).
Read more: http://mashable.com/2014/03/31/eat24-breaks-up-with-facebook/
Eat24 and Facebook Have a Conscious Uncoupling
advertising, business, Eat24, Facebook, Marketing
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