How was facebook designed

Facebook | Overview, History, & Facts

Mark Zuckerberg

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Date:: 2004 - present

Headquarters:: Menlo Park

Areas Of Involvement:: open source social network

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Facebook, American online social network service that is part of the company Meta Platforms. Facebook was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, all of whom were students at Harvard University. Facebook became the largest social network in the world, with nearly three billion users as of 2021, and about half that number were using Facebook every day. The company’s headquarters are in Menlo Park, California.

Access to Facebook is free of charge, and the company earns most of its money from advertisements on the website. New users can create profiles, upload photos, join a preexisting group, and start new groups. The site has many components, including Timeline, a space on each user’s profile page where users can post their content and friends can post messages; Status, which enables users to alert friends to their current location or situation; and News Feed, which informs users of changes to their friends’ profiles and status. Users can chat with each other and send each other private messages. Users can signal their approval of content on Facebook with the Like button, a feature that also appears on many other websites. Other services that are part of Meta Platforms are Instagram, a photo- and video-sharing social network; Messenger, an instant-messaging application; and WhatsApp, a text-message and VoIP service.

The attractiveness of Facebook stems in part from cofounder Zuckerberg’s insistence from the very beginning that members be transparent about who they are; users are forbidden from adopting false identities. The company’s management argued that transparency is necessary for forming personal relationships, sharing ideas and information, and building up society as a whole. It also noted that the bottom-up, peer-to-peer connectivity among Facebook users makes it easier for businesses to connect their products with consumers.

The company has a complicated early history. It began at Harvard University in 2003 as Facemash, an online service for students to judge the attractiveness of their fellow students. Because the primary developer, Zuckerberg, violated university policy in acquiring resources for the service, it was shut down after two days. Despite its mayflylike existence, 450 people (who voted 22,000 times) flocked to Facemash. That success prompted Zuckerberg to register the URL http://www.thefacebook.com in January 2004. He then created a new social network at that address with fellow students Saverin, Moskovitz, and Hughes.

The social network TheFacebook.com launched in February 2004. Harvard students who signed up for the service could post photographs of themselves and personal information about their lives, such as their class schedules and clubs they belonged to. Its popularity increased, and soon students from other prestigious schools, such as Yale and Stanford universities, were allowed to join. By June 2004 more than 250,000 students from 34 schools had signed up, and that same year major corporations such as the credit card company MasterCard started paying for exposure on the site.

In September 2004 TheFacebook added the Wall to a member’s online profile. This widely used feature let a user’s friends post information on their Wall and became a key element in the social aspect of the network. By the end of 2004, TheFacebook had reached one million active users. However, the company still trailed the then-leading online social network, Myspace, which boasted five million members.

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The year 2005 proved to be pivotal for the company. It became simply Facebook and introduced the idea of “tagging” people in photos that were posted to the site. With tags, people identified themselves and others in images that could be seen by other Facebook friends. Facebook allowed users to upload an unlimited number of photos. In 2005 high-school students and students at universities outside the United States were allowed to join the service. By year’s end it had six million monthly active users.

In 2006 Facebook opened its membership beyond students to anyone over the age of 13. As Zuckerberg had predicted, advertisers were able to create new and effective customer relationships. For example, that year, household product manufacturer Procter & Gamble attracted 14,000 people to a promotional effort by “expressing affinity” with a teeth-whitening product. This kind of direct consumer engagement on such a large scale had not been possible before Facebook, and more companies began using the social network for marketing and advertising.

Privacy remains an ongoing problem for Facebook. It first became a serious issue for the company in 2006, when it introduced News Feed, which consisted of every change that a user’s friends had made to their pages. After an outcry from users, Facebook swiftly implemented privacy controls in which users could control what content appeared in News Feed. In 2007 Facebook launched a short-lived service called Beacon that let members’ friends see what products they had purchased from participating companies. It failed because members felt that it encroached on their privacy. Indeed, a survey of consumers in 2010 put Facebook in the bottom 5 percent of companies in customer satisfaction largely because of privacy concerns, and the company continues to be criticized for the complexity of its user privacy controls and for the frequent changes it makes to them.

In 2008 Facebook surpassed Myspace as the most-visited social media website. With the introduction of Live Feed, the company also took a competitive swing at the growing popularity of Twitter, a social network that runs a live feed of news service-like posts from members whom a user follows. Similar to Twitter’s ongoing stream of user posts, Live Feed pushed posts from friends automatically to a member’s homepage. (Live Feed has since been incorporated into News Feed.)

Facebook has become a powerful tool for political movements, beginning with the U.S. presidential election of 2008, when more than 1,000 Facebook groups were formed in support of either Democratic candidate Barack Obama or Republican candidate John McCain. In Colombia the service was used to rally hundreds of thousands in protests against the antigovernment FARC guerrilla rebellion. In Egypt, activists protesting the government of Pres. Hosni Mubarak during the uprising of 2011 often organized themselves by forming groups on Facebook.

Facebook encourages third-party software developers to use the service. In 2006 it released its application programming interface (API) so that programmers could write software that Facebook members could use directly through the service. By 2009 developers generated about $500 million in revenue for themselves through Facebook. The company also earns revenues from developers through payments for virtual or digital products sold through third-party applications. By 2011 payments from one such company, Zynga Inc., an online game developer, accounted for 12 percent of the company’s revenues.

In February 2012 Facebook filed to become a public company. Its initial public offering (IPO) in May raised $16 billion, giving it a market value of $102.4 billion. By contrast, the largest IPO of an Internet company to date was that of the search-engine company Google Inc., which had raised $1.9 billion when it went public in 2004. By the end of the first day of the stock’s trading, Zuckerberg’s holdings were estimated at more than $19 billion.

In October 2021 Facebook announced that it was changing the name of its parent company to Meta Platforms. The name change reflected an emphasis on the “metaverse,” in which users would interact in virtual reality environments.

Mark Hall

How Facebook Was Founded

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The origins of Facebook have been in dispute since the very week a 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg launched the site as a Harvard sophomore on February 4, 2004.

Then called "thefacebook.com," the site was an instant hit. Now, six years later, the site has become one of the biggest web sites in the world, visited by 400 million people a month.

The controversy surrounding Facebook began quickly. A week after he launched the site in 2004, Mark was accused by three Harvard seniors of having stolen the idea from them.

This allegation soon bloomed into a full-fledged lawsuit, as a competing company founded by the Harvard seniors sued Mark and Facebook for theft and fraud, starting a legal odyssey that continues to this day.

New information uncovered by Silicon Alley Insider suggests that some of the complaints against Mark Zuckerberg are valid. It also suggests that, on at least one occasion in 2004, Mark used private login data taken from Facebook's servers to break into Facebook members' private email accounts and read their emails — at best, a gross misuse of private information. Lastly, it suggests that Mark hacked into the competing company's systems and changed some user information with the aim of making the site less useful.

The primary dispute around Facebook's origins centered around whether Mark had entered into an "agreement" with the Harvard seniors, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and a classmate named Divya Narendra, to develop a similar web site for them — and then, instead, stalled their project while taking their idea and building his own.

The litigation never went particularly well for the Winklevosses.

In 2007, Massachusetts Judge Douglas P. Woodlock called their allegations "tissue thin. " Referring to the agreement that Mark had allegedly breached, Woodlock also wrote, "Dorm room chit-chat does not make a contract." A year later, the end finally seemed in sight: a judge ruled against Facebook's move to dismiss the case. Shortly thereafter, the parties agreed to settle.

But then, a twist.

After Facebook announced the settlement, but before the settlement was finalized, lawyers for the Winklevosses suggested that the hard drive from Mark Zuckerberg's computer at Harvard might contain evidence of Mark's fraud. Specifically, they suggested that the hard drive included some damning instant messages and emails.

The judge in the case refused to look at the hard drive and instead deferred to another judge who went on to approve the settlement. But, naturally, the possibility that the hard drive contained additional evidence set inquiring minds wondering what those emails and IMs revealed. Specifically, it set inquiring minds wondering again whether Mark had, in fact, stolen the Winklevoss's idea, screwed them over, and then ridden off into the sunset with Facebook.

Unfortunately, since the contents of Mark's hard drive had not been made public, no one had the answers.

But now we have some.

Over the past two years, we have interviewed more than a dozen sources familiar with aspects of this story — including people involved in the founding year of the company. We have also reviewed what we believe to be some relevant IMs and emails from the period. Much of this information has never before been made public. None of it has been confirmed or authenticated by Mark or the company.

Based on the information we obtained, we have what we believe is a more complete picture of how Facebook was founded. This account follows.

And what does this more complete story reveal?

We'll offer our own conclusions at the end. But first, here's the story:

"We can talk about that after I get all the basic functionality up tomorrow night."

In the fall of 2003, Harvard seniors Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra were on the lookout for a web developer who could bring to life an idea the three say Divya first had in 2002: a social network for Harvard students and alumni. The site was to be called HarvardConnections.com.

The three had been paying Victor Gao, another Harvard student, to do coding for the site, but at the beginning of the fall term Victor begged off the project. Victor suggested his own replacement: Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard sophomore from Dobbs Ferry, New York.

Back then, Mark was known at Harvard as the sophomore who had built Facemash, a "Hot Or Not" clone for Harvard. Facemash had already made Mark a bit of a celebrity on campus, for two reasons.

The first is that Mark got in trouble for creating it. The way the site worked was that it pulled photos of Harvard students off of Harvard's Web sites. It rearranged these photos so that when people visited Facemash.com they would see pictures of two Harvard students and be asked to vote on which was more attractive. The site also maintained a list of Harvard students, ranked by attractiveness.

On Harvard's politically correct campus, this upset people, and Mark was soon hauled in front of Harvard's disciplinary board for students. According to a November 19, 2003 Harvard Crimson article, he was charged with breaching security, violating copyrights, and violating individual privacy. Happily for Mark, the article reports that he wasn't expelled.

The second reason everyone at Harvard knew about Facemash and Mark Zuckerberg was that Facemash had been an instant hit. The same Harvard Crimson story reports that after two weeks, "the site had been visited by 450 people, who voted at least 22,000 times." That means the average visitor voted 48 times.

It was for this ability to build a wildly popular site that Victor Gao first recommended Mark to Cameron, Tyler, and Divya. Sold on Mark, the Harvard Connection trio reached out to him. Mark agreed to meet.

They first met in an early evening in late November in the dining hall of Harvard College's Kirkland House. Cameron, Tyler, and Divya brought up their idea for Harvard Connection, and described their plans to A) build the site for Harvard students only, by requiring new users to register with Harvard. edu email addresses, and B) expand Harvard Connection beyond Harvard to schools around the country. Mark reportedly showed enthusiastic interest in the project.

Later that night, Mark wrote an email to the Winklevoss brothers and Divya: "I read over all the stuff you sent and it seems like it shouldn't take too long to implement, so we can talk about that after I get all the basic functionality up tomorrow night."

The next day, on December 1, Mark sent another email to the HarvardConnections team. Part of it read, "I put together one of the two registration pages so I have everything working on my system now. I'll keep you posted as I patch stuff up and it starts to become completely functional."

These two emails sounded like the words of someone who was eager to be a part of the team and working away on the project. A few days later, however, Mark's emails to the HarvardConnection team started to change in tone. Specifically, they went from someone who seemed to be hard at work building the product to someone who was so busy with schoolwork that he had no time to do any coding at all.

December 4: "Sorry I was unreachable tonight. I just got about three of your missed calls. I was working on a problem set."

December 10: "The week has been pretty busy thus far, so I haven't gotten a chance to do much work on the site or even think about it really, so I think it's probably best to postpone meeting until we have more to discuss. I'm also really busy tomorrow so I don't think I'd be able to meet then anyway."

A week later: "Sorry I have not been reachable for the past few days. I've basically been in the lab the whole time working on a cs problem set which I"m still not finished with."

Finally, on January 8:

Sorry it's taken a while for me to get back to you. I'm completely swamped with work this week. I have three programming projects and a final paper due by Monday, as well as a couple of problem sets due Friday. I'll be available to discuss the site again starting Tuesday.

I"m still a little skeptical that we have enough functionality in the site to really draw the attention and gain the critical mass necessary to get a site like this to run…Anyhow, we'll talk about it once I get everything else done.

So what happened to change Mark's tune about HarvardConnection? Was he so swamped with work that he was unable to finish the project? Or, as the HarvardConnection founders have alleged, was he stalling the development of HarvardConnection so that he could build a competing site and launch it first?

Our investigation suggests the latter.

As a part of the lawsuit against Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, the above emails from Mark have been public for years. What has never been revealed publicly is what Mark was telling his friends, parents, and closest confidants at the same time.

Let's start with a December 7th (IM) exchange Mark Zuckerberg had with his Harvard classmate and Facebook cofounder, Eduardo Saverin.

"They made a mistake haha. They asked me to make it for them."

Former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel gets a lot of credit for being the first investor in Facebook, because he led the first formal Facebook round in September of 2004 with a $500,000 investment at a $5 million valuation. But the real "first investor" claim to fame should actually belong to a Harvard classmate of Mark Zuckerberg's named Eduardo Saverin.

To picture Eduardo, what you need to know is that he was the kid at Harvard who would wear a suit to class. He liked to give people the impression that he was rich — and maybe somehow connected to the Brazilian mafia. At one point, in an IM exchange, Mark told a friend that Eduardo — "head of the investment society" — was rich because "apparently insider trading isn't illegal in Brazil."

Eduardo Saverin wasn't directly involved with Facebook for long: During the summer of 2004, when Mark moved to Palo Alto to work on Facebook full time, Eduardo took a high-paying internship at Lehman Brothers in New York. While Mark was still at Harvard, however, Eduardo appears to have bankrolled Facebook's earliest capital expenses, thus becoming its initial investor.

In January, however, Mark told a friend that "Eduardo is paying for my servers." Eventually, Eduardo would agree to invest $15,000 in a company that would, in April 2004, be formed as Facebook LLC. For his money, Eduardo would get 30% of the company.

Eduardo was also involved in Facebook's earliest days, as a confidant of Mark Zuckerberg.

In December, 2003, a week after Mark's first meeting with the HarvardConnection team, when he was telling the Winklevosses that he was too busy with schoolwork to work on or even think about HarvardConnection.com, Mark was telling Eduardo a different story. On December 7, 2003, we believe Mark sent Eduardo the following IM:

Check this site out: www.harvardconnection.com and then go to harvardconnection.com/datehome.php. Someone is already trying to make a dating site. But they made a mistake haha. They asked me to make it for them. So I'm like delaying it so it won't be ready until after the facebook thing comes out.

This IM suggests that, within a week of meeting with the Winklevosses for the first time, Mark had already decided to start his own, similar project--"the facebook thing." It also suggests that he had developed a strategy for dealing with his would-be competition: Delay developing it.

"I feel like the right thing to do is finish the facebook and wait until the last day before I'm supposed to have their thing ready and then be like look yours isn't as good"

A few weeks after the initial meeting with the HarvardConnection team, after Mark sent the IM to Eduardo Saverin talking about developing "the facebook thing" and delaying his development of HarvardConnection, Mark met with the HarvardConnection folks, Cameron, Tyler, and Divya, for a second time.

This time, instead of meeting in the dining hall of Mark's residential hall, Kirkland House, the four met in Mark's dorm room. Divya is said to have arrived late.

In Kirkland House, the dorm rooms aren't laid out in cinder-block-cube style: Mark's room had a narrow hallway connecting it to his neighbor's. As Cameron and Tyler sat down on a couch in Mark's room, Cameron spotted something in the hallway. On top of a bookshelf there was a white board. It was the kind Web developers and product managers everywhere use to map out their ideas.

On it, Cameron read two words, "Harvard Connection." He got up to go look at it. Immediately, Mark asked Cameron to stay out of the hallway.

Eventually Divya arrived and the four of them talked about plans for Harvard Connection. One feature Mark brought up was designed to keep more popular and sought-after Harvard Connection users from being stalked and harassed by crowds of people.

In this second meeting, Mark still appeared to be actively engaged in developing Harvard Connection. But he never showed the HarvardConnection folks any site prototypes or code. And they didn't insist on seeing them.

During the weeks in which Mark was juggling the two projects in tandem, he also had a series of IM exchanges with a friend named Adam D'Angelo (above).

Adam and Mark went to boarding school together at Phillips Exeter Academy. There, the pair became friends and coding partners. Together they built a program called Synapse, a music player that supposedly learned the listener's taste and then adapted to it. Then, in 2002 Mark went to Harvard and Adam went to Cal Tech. But the pair stayed in close touch, especially through AOL instant messenger. Eventually, Adam became Facebook's CTO.

Through the Harvard Connection-Facebook saga and its aftermath, Mark kept Adam apprised of his plans and thoughts.

One purported IM exchange seems particularly relevant on the question of how Mark distinguished between the two projects--the "facebook thing" and "the dating site"--as well as how he was considering handling the latter:

Zuck: So you know how I'm making that dating site

Zuck: I wonder how similar that is to the Facebook thing

Zuck: Because they're probably going to be released around the same time

Zuck: Unless I fuck the dating site people over and quit on them right before I told them I'd have it done.

D'Angelo: haha

Zuck: Like I don't think people would sign up for the facebook thing if they knew it was for dating

Zuck: and I think people are skeptical about joining dating things too.

Zuck: But the guy doing the dating thing is going to promote it pretty well.

Zuck: I wonder what the ideal solution is.

Zuck: I think the Facebook thing by itself would draw many people, unless it were released at the same time as the dating thing.

Zuck: In which case both things would cancel each other out and nothing would win. Any ideas? Like is there a good way to consolidate the two.

D'Angelo: We could make it into a whole network like a friendster. haha. Stanford has something like that internally

Zuck: Well I was thinking of doing that for the facebook. The only thing that's different about theirs is that you like request dates with people or connections with the facebook you don't do that via the system.

D'Angelo: Yeah

Zuck: I also hate the fact that I'm doing it for other people haha. Like I hate working under other people. I feel like the right thing to do is finish the facebook and wait until the last day before I'm supposed to have their thing ready and then be like "look yours isn't as good as this so if you want to join mine you can…otherwise I can help you with yours later. " Or do you think that's too dick?

D'Angelo: I think you should just ditch them

Zuck: The thing is they have a programmer who could finish their thing and they have money to pour into advertising and stuff. Oh wait I have money too. My friend who wants to sponsor this is head of the investment society. Apparently insider trading isn't illegal in Brazil so he's rich lol.

D'Angelo: lol

"I'm going to fuck them."

Eduardo Saverin and Adam D'Angelo were not the only people Mark discussed his Harvard Connection - Facebook situation with. We believe he also had many IM exchanges about it with relatives and a close female Harvard friend.

In January 2004, Mark met with the Winklevoss brothers and Divya Narendra for what would be the last time. The meeting was on January 14, 2004, and it was held at the same place Mark met with the HarvardConnection team for the first time — in the dining hall of Mark's residence, Kirkland House.

By this point, Mark's site, thefacebook. com, wasn't complete, but he was working hard on it. He'd arranged for Eduardo Saverin to pay for his servers. He had already told Adam that "the right thing to do" was to not complete Harvard Connection and build TheFacebook.com instead. He had registered the domain name.

He therefore had a choice to make: Tell Cameron, Tyler and Divya that he wanted out of their project, or string them along until he was ready to launch thefacebook.com.

Mark sought advice on this decision from his confidants. One friend told him, in so many words, you know me. I don't ever think anyone should do anything bad to anybody.

Mark and this friend also had the following IM exchange about how Mark planned to resolve the competing projects:

Friend: So have you decided what you're going to do about the websites?

Zuck: Yeah, I'm going to fuck them

Zuck: Probably in the year

Zuck: *ear

And so, it appears, he did. (In a manner of speaking).

On January 14, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg met with Cameron, Tyler, and Divya for the last time. During the meeting at Kirkland House, Mark expressed doubts about the viability of HarvardConnection.com. He said he was very busy with personal projects and school work and that he wouldn't be able to work on the site for a while. He blamed others for the site's delays.

He did not say that he was working on his own project and that he was not planning to complete the HarvardConnection site.

After the meeting, Mark had another IM exchange with the friend above. He told her, in effect, that he had wimped out. He hadn't been able to break the news to Cameron and Tyler, in part, he said, because he was "intimidated" by them. He called them "poor bastards."

So then what happened?

Three days earlier, on January 11, 2004, Mark had registered the domain THEFACEBOOK.COM.

On February 4, he opened the site to Harvard students.

On February 10, Cameron Winklevoss sent Mark a letter accusing him of breaching their agreement and stealing their idea.

In late May, after going through two more developers, Cameron, Tyler and Divya launched HarvardConnection as ConnectU, a social network for 15 schools.

On June 10, 2004, a commencement speaker mentioned the amazing popularity of Mark's site, thefacebook.com.

In the summer of 2004, Mark moved to Palo Alto to work on Facebook full time and soon received a $500,000 investment from Peter Thiel.

In September 2004, HarvardConnection, now called ConnectU, sued Mark Zuckerberg and the now-incorporated "Facebook" for allegedly breaching their agreement and stealing their idea.

In February 2008, Facebook and ConnectU agreed to settle the lawsuit.

In June 2008, ConnectU appealed the settlement in California's ninth district, accusing Facebook of trading its stock without disclosing material information. This appeal is on-going.

The $65 million question

When we described the specifics of this story to Facebook, the company had the following comment:

"We’re not going to debate the disgruntled litigants and anonymous sources who seek to rewrite Facebook’s early history or embarrass Mark Zuckerberg with dated allegations. The unquestioned fact is that since leaving Harvard for Silicon Valley nearly six years ago, Mark has led Facebook's growth from a college website to a global service playing an important role in the lives of over 400 million people."

On the latter point, we agree. What Mark Zuckerberg has accomplished with Facebook over the past six years has been nothing short of amazing.

So, having revisited the founding of Facebook with additional information, what do we conclude?

First, we have seen no evidence of any formal contract between Mark Zuckerberg and the Winklevosses in which Mark agreed to develop Harvard Connection.

Second, any agreement the parties may have had — as well as most of the purported IMs and emails we have reviewed from the period — appear to have been at the level of, as Judge Ware described them, "dorm-room chit-chat." (Albeit interesting and entertaining chit-chat.)

Third, only a week after beginning development of Harvard Connection, which he referred to as "the dating site," Mark had begun work on a separate project — "the facebook thing. " Mark appears to have considered the products as competing for the attention of the same users, but he also appears to have regarded them as different in some key ways.

Fourth — and because of this foreseen competition — Mark does appear to have intentionally strung along the Harvard Connection folks with the goal of making his project, thefacebook.com, have a more successful launch.

Bottom line, we haven't seen anything that makes us think that, whatever Mark did to the Harvard Connection folks, it was worth more than the $65 million they received in the lawsuit settlement. In fact, this seems like a huge sum of money considering that the entire dispute took place over two months in 2004 and that, in the six years since, Mark has built Facebook into a massive global enterprise.

That said, in the course of our investigation, we also uncovered two additional anecdotes about Mark's behavior in Facebook's early days that are more troubling. These episodes — an apparent hacking into the email accounts of Harvard Crimson editors using data obtained from Facebook logins, as well as a later hacking into ConnectU — are described in detail here.

How Mark Zuckerberg Hacked The Harvard Crimson Using Data From TheFacebook.com
How Mark Zuckerberg Hacked Into Rival ConnectU In The Summer Of 2004
Don't Miss: Our Exclusive Interview With Mark Zuckerberg (Before The Social Network, When He Was Almost Famous)

How the Facebook algorithm works and how to outwit it - Marketing on vc.ru

Brent Barnhart on the Sprout Social blog shared his observations about how the Facebook algorithm works and how to outwit it. We have translated and adapted this material for the SiteAnalyzer blog.

9516 views

You will probably agree that Facebook's algorithm often seems like a mystery, so it's natural that many brands are concerned about their presence on the platform.

And even if you haven't been affected in any way by recent algorithm changes, you've likely heard horror stories about brands seeing their organic reach plummet.

However, Facebook's algorithm changes don't necessarily mean that brands will have problems with it.

According to Sprout's 2019 Social Index, Facebook continues to be the number one platform for marketers and consumers.

Recent Facebook stats also note that the platform provides one of the best ROI for marketers in terms of social advertising. Given that your customers are already registered on Facebook, there is a reason for you to consider this social network as an advertising platform for distributing your services.

But how is it really? To stay afloat in the new Facebook algorithm, you need to make some adjustments to your content strategy. This way you can increase your organic reach.

How does the Facebook algorithm work now?

The essence of the Facebook algorithm is that it controls the formation of the news feed so that it most closely matches user requests.

Instead of displaying content in chronological order, the news feed and ads are published based on what Facebook thinks is relevant to you as a user.

At the same time, every time the Facebook methodology changes, marketers immediately raise a panic.

The most significant and drastic change came in early 2018, when Facebook announced its resistance to branded content, which made many companies sweat. In a moment of transparency from Mark Zuckerberg himself, Facebook appears to have challenged marketers and brands in general.

Facebook's 2018 algorithm update was designed to focus content around individuals' friends and family members rather than favor spam from companies. This left established companies and brands in a difficult position as they had to adapt their Facebook marketing strategies accordingly.

Changes and stages of development of the Facebook algorithm

Fast forward to today and we can see that the Facebook algorithm is still evolving. Below is a screenshot of some of the changes Facebook made in 2019.

Update: "Why am I seeing this entry?"

Since March 2019, Facebook has been providing context to explain why users see certain content or ads in their News Feed. This reminds brands once again of the need to hone in on their audiences and encourage engagement from followers.

The ongoing fight against disinformation

Facebook's fight against "fake news" and misleading content is widespread in the media. In April 2019, Facebook detailed its content verification efforts to combat misinformation.

This probably doesn't affect brands directly, but it certainly highlights the importance of trust and transparency on the platform. Since any content that was perceived as unnecessarily controversial or spam could quickly fall under penalties.

Surveys to help personalize your newsfeed

Personalization and relevance of content remains a top priority for the Facebook algorithm. In May 2019, Facebook announced the widespread use of polls to collect user feedback to make sure they see relevant content.

Regarding the potential impact on business pages, Facebook representatives stated the following:

"These changes were not made with the intent of showing more or less content on pages or with friends. Rather, the changes will be to links to pages that people find worth taking their time to, and will increasingly show posts from friends that people are interested in. "

From all of this, likes, comments, reactions, and any other form of interaction are all valuable currency for brands that want their content to be relevant to subscribers.

A note about Facebook reactions: This is an interaction pattern that also influences what the user sees in their feed. But for marketers, reaction is also another way to interact with customers. These badges provide a hub of useful information and allow marketers to see how customers "feel" about their posts. Facebook allows today's businesses to have a clearer picture of what their customers like. Negative reactions also help brands maintain their reputation and solve consumer problems. With reactions, brands can improve and tailor their posts to capture the desired emotion from consumers.

9 strategies for adapting (and outsmarting) the Facebook algorithm

All of these ongoing changes point to how the Facebook algorithm is forcing brands to adapt to its rules.

This may seem complicated, but it does not diminish the importance of social efforts to promote on the Facebook platform.

As part of the new algorithm's focus on more authentic interactions, brands are expected to promote quality content that can drive genuine interactions and shares.

How can this be achieved? Below are nine effective strategies on how to keep your brand alive in the new Facebook algorithm.

1. Optimize your posting time on Facebook

The Facebook algorithm prioritizes posts that get attention, so the time factor is very important.

To increase engagement, brands should stick to a content calendar that selects the best times to post on social media.

The most important thing is the publication time. This table sheds light on when the audience is usually most active. You need to remember that all methods are good when you are trying to increase your chances of getting your post seen by as many subscribers as possible.

And by the way, Sprout lets you schedule Facebook posts based on when they're most likely to get the most engagement. In this way, subscribers already know “when” your post will appear approximately and thus can contribute to the interaction.

2. Make Video the Core of Your Content Strategy

You've heard it hundreds of times and we'll say it again: marketers need to implement video content now or never.

Facebook executives noted that video content increased user engagement and interaction compared to any other type of content on the platform. Meanwhile, the recent video ranking update further highlights the importance of native video on Facebook.

Marketers of all shapes and sizes can post videos on Facebook that are perfect for starting a conversation and drawing fans' attention to a page. You don't have to create high-budget commercial content to do this.

For example, look at how Sharpie double-posts custom video content for Instagram on his Facebook page. These short but sweet snippets prove that the video has a huge benefit, in addition to meaningful production.

The platform also encourages creators to use Facebook Live to create compelling real-time content for their audience. Interestingly, Live Video sends notifications that ping your fans and followers. This is an added bonus that also makes your videos stand out.

Whether it's an impromptu vlog or a how-to guide like Fender's, live video is a powerful medium for brands today.

Take for example the same simple and hackneyed videos that can also be successful. Warby Parker often posts short videos that can be made in seconds and still get user engagement.

In this case, it's not about outsmarting the Facebook algorithm, but about giving the platform exactly what it wants. After all, Facebook rewards organic reach for posts that generate discussion and capture the attention of users.

With so many options available and Facebook's clear desire for even more visual content, making more videos is easy.

3. First we stimulate discussion - then we share links

As part of the latest update to the Facebook algorithm, the platform is now issuing penalties on marketers who try to cheat the system, so to speak.

For example, Facebook has clearly tightened the screws on publications containing "bait". While posts that come with a direct request for comments, tags or likes were once the norm, Facebook now acknowledges that these posts often serve as spam.

While there may still be a time and place for such publications, brands should be willing to engage in dialogue with consumers without being ashamed of it. Facebook wants us to create content that stimulates discussion, as long as we approach it with creative methods.

For example, you can poll your audience, allowing them to start the discussion themselves. This jokey post of questions from Loot Crate got a lot of feedback in the form of comments and reposts:

In fact, having questions in any post is a smart way to encourage commenting without having to beg for them. See how Milk Makeup uses a simple question in one of their posts as a call to action:

“All our plans are falling apart like a hurricane. How did you not have a day off? We'd love to hear it :)”

Brands should also try to publish content worthy of discussion when needed. Controversial content is just that, although brands must be careful not to risk offending or alienating audiences (in the case of overtly politically charged or “shocking” content).

A recent study by Sprout Social found that if your audience disagrees with your position on social and political issues, they are less likely to buy from you or recommend your brand to others.

Consider a brand like Delish, which regularly publishes buzz-inducing recipes and articles that generate a lot of discussion and reposting without causing irritation. These non-standard publications are ideal for getting a response from subscribers.

The more you can get people to talk, the more likely the Facebook algorithm will organically rank your content as "featured".

4. Encourage employees and brand advocates to promote your content

The key to understanding the Facebook algorithm was right under your nose the moment you started marketing on the platform. However, many brands simply don't notice it. And that key is your employees.

The concept of employee advocacy is growing in popularity. Since Facebook focuses on content from friends and family rather than business, this is the right time to start an employee advocacy program or upgrade it if you already have one.

Your Facebook page reach is already somewhat limited by the number of your fans/followers. And when you make these new changes to the algorithm, the number of people watching your content will drop even further.

By encouraging your employees to share your content on their Facebook pages, you instantly expand your reach. What’s more, since the posts will come from friends and family rather than your brand, people’s interest in these posts will increase 16 times.

Even if your brand has significantly more followers than your employees, if they show higher engagement, it will become more valuable in the eyes of Facebook.

The challenge is to get employees to share your content. Just sending an email asking you to share an article is not enough. It would take too much time and effort to go to Facebook, type a message and share it. In addition, some employees will simply forget to share and never return to this letter.

This is where an employee advocacy platform like Bambu comes in handy.

Bambu makes it very easy to curate the content your employees can share on their personal Facebook page. You can provide a summary of what is being discussed and suggest a message option that they can include in their post.

In addition, each time employees log in, they see recommended content that they can share. This will allow them to publish the post at a convenient time for them.

5. Favor photos and tags over external links

The conventional wisdom is that Facebook prefers brands to store content on their platform rather than linking exclusively to external sites.

In fact, Facebook's practice of not paying too much attention to links and prioritizing its own content is no secret, especially in the case of videos.

Of course, you won't completely disappear from your subscribers' newsfeed by posting links only. But, you should update your news with different types of content. Bombing your followers with just external links is not only the worst method in terms of marketing, but it will not do you any good with the new Facebook algorithm.

For example, visual content keeps pace with Facebook best practices, gets 87% more engagement. That's why every post should be accompanied by some kind of visual element, whether it's an infographic, a GIF, or another enticing image.

You can also enhance your descriptions with hashtags or say thank you to another page, which can further expand your reach.

Again, your ultimate goal is to encourage engagement, as the links themselves won't scream "hey, pay attention to me. "

6. Each post must be unique to Facebook

Because brands are expected to consistently post on Facebook day in and day out, companies often run out of their own content to move forward.

Ultimately, this leads to brands repeating themselves, posting the same posts over and over again, or not getting enough bang for their buck from a single post.

How can I fix this?

First, consider creating unique descriptions for your posts so they don't get repeated. Where you previously used a quote, replace it with a tag or ask a question.

Another strategy for re-adding old snippets to your feed, where repetition will be eliminated, is content repurposing.

There are many Facebook tools that can help you instantly turn your work into something completely new.

For example, you can turn a quote from an article into a custom image using Canva or Adobe Spark. You can also convert your post to video with Lumen5 or Animoto.

7. Start chatting in Facebook groups

Reporting a decline in Facebook page reach, with some sources citing organic reach as low as 2%, is arguably the biggest blow to marketers.

Does this mean that you should completely abandon the promotion of the brand page on Facebook?

Of course not, but it explains why many marketers are moving to Facebook groups, since fans and followers are essentially "added" to the group and participate in discussions within it. In a sense, the customers who join your group are the most likely to interact with your brand content.

For problem solvers and community educators, Facebook groups may be a better fit for your needs, rather than having to start a page from scratch.

8. Narrow your target audience

One of the beauties of Facebook is the ability to focus on your audience.

If you have a broad audience, consider narrowing your audience by interest or geographic location. Facebook gives you the ability to set these preferences and limits on a per-post basis. While this may initially narrow your reach, it can increase your engagement as a result. Think of it as fine-tuning relevancy for specific subscribers.

This option is perfect for national companies that hold events in several cities. Residents of St. Petersburg, for example, may not care that you are hosting an event in Moscow.

Narrowing the audience for viewing this publication to subscribers from St. Petersburg means that it will be available only to those people who can really come to this event. This increases the likelihood of more active interaction.

9. Invest in Paid Facebook Promotion

While brands should certainly focus on improving their organic reach, the power of Facebook ads should not be overlooked.

Why is this important?

The data shows that Facebook advertising generates an exceptionally positive ROI, with 93% of marketers already using it. With fine-grained targeting and combined with a host of creative options, Facebook ads offer marketers a freedom unlike any other advertising platform.

By applying some of the above tips at least twice, you can create a video ad that will grab the attention of your subscribers.

Of course, there are also collectible and carousel ads, which Facebook notes perform very well and have a low CPC.

By combining your organic efforts with Facebook advertising, you are in a winning position. Brands have already written about how to think of Facebook as a pay-to-play platform.

Therefore, starting experimenting with advertising now is a smart idea in the long run.

And on this, perhaps, we will complete our list!

What do you think about the new Facebook algorithm?

Like it or not, Facebook's ever-changing algorithm is requiring brands to rethink their content strategies.

This is relevant now and will probably be relevant in a few months. Adapting to this kind of change is the nature of social marketing in general.

And marketers who adhere to Facebook best practices are more likely to be rewarded with audience reach.

Just be honest: what do you think about the latest changes in the Facebook algorithm? Is it confusing or, on the contrary, does it make sense? Share your opinion in the comments!

How the Facebook business works: company analysis

Mikhail Gorodilov

makes money on investments

Author profile

Facebook is an American social network. Advertising is the company's main source of revenue, but it has many other businesses as well. At the same time, the sustainability of the company's advertising business is questionable.

What's going on here

Readers have been asking us for a long time to start looking into the accounts and business foundations of foreign issuers. The idea to dismantle the Facebook business was given to us by the reader Alex Freeman in the comments to the Amazon dismantling. Suggest in the comments the companies whose analysis you would like to read.

How they earn

In general, Facebook has a lot of businesses:

Actually, the main social network Facebook is the American predecessor of the Russian Vkontakte.
A messenger under the original name Messenger that complements Facebook. Why did the geniuses from California make a separate application from Facebook chat, which on smartphones and tablets also needs to be downloaded separately from the main Facebook, is a great secret.
Instagram is a social network for posting photos.
WhatsApp messenger, which, unlike Messenger, is not attached to anything.
Oculus. These are devices and software in the field of virtual reality.

The company also has investments in such areas as AI, augmented reality and the Internet of things, but there is no specifics on them in the report.

The company's annual report is artless and sparse in detail: we don't know anything about how much Oculus brings in, and how much Instagram brings in. But from what we do know about the company, we can say with confidence that Facebook is an advertising business. All non-advertising revenues are grouped under "Other".

According to the geography of revenue, Facebook can be considered a full-fledged exporter: the US and Canada account for less than half of the revenue. Unfortunately, the company does not provide information about which countries, except for the United States and Canada, bring it the most money.

Source: Company's annual report, p. 56 (57) Source: Company's annual report, p. 56 (57) Source: Company's annual report, p. 86 (87) Source: Company's annual report, p. 86 (87) Revenue and profit for the last 12 months in billions of dollars, total margin as a percentage of revenue. Source: Macrotrends

Size is

Facebook, as we defined above, is an advertising business. And here its size plays into the hands of the company - it is ahead of its competitors: 2.6 billion users on Facebook, 1.3 billion people on Messenger alone, 2 billion people on WhatsApp, 1. 08 billion on Instagram.

Actually, for access to this audience, Facebook takes huge money from advertisers, and also torments them with its rules for placing ads.

The advantages of Facebook are especially visible in comparison. Facebook was founded a year after LinkedIn, but it generates over $60 billion in revenue from its 2.6 billion users. LinkedIn generates roughly $5 billion in revenue from its 654 million users, which is small given the size and compared to Facebook. At the same time, LinkedIn is still unprofitable.

Source: Visual Capitalist Source: Visual Capitalist Source: Financial Times Source: Financial Times

What is preventing the company

The advertising, that is, the main business of the company, is in trouble, both from the momentary economic situation and fundamental ones.

Firstly, the growth of the dollar in September may not lead to the most positive result in the report this quarter, given the large share of foreign sales in the company's revenue structure. A more expensive dollar means that there will be less dollars in the final report than it could be.

Secondly, this is not the best year for the advertising business. The coronavirus has crippled many industries, and they have reduced their advertising spending.

Digital advertising - the diocese of Facebook - has received less, but growth rates there this year will be much lower than previously planned. As I wrote in an idea for J2 Global, this year advertisers are going to spend more than two times less money on social networks than they planned.

Let's not forget that among Facebook's biggest advertisers, at least a few, such as Disney and CBS, have been hit hard by the corona crisis. It is worth fearing that Facebook will not be able to meet investors' expectations for revenue and profit this year.

Source: Wall Street Journal Source: Wall Street Journal Source: CNBC Source: CNBC

Thirdly, Facebook got a lot of people. This summer, a number of major advertisers pulled out of Facebook, ostensibly because the platform was doing little to promote a progressive agenda and fight racism. This does not look very convincing, because Facebook bans mercilessly for everything.

I think advertisers are really fed up with the terms of cooperation with Facebook. Many companies feel that Facebook charges too much for their services.

This problem has two dimensions. The first is a huge number of fake users of the social network. The price of advertising on the platform is formed taking into account the fact that Facebook has a lot of users, and advertisers are annoyed that there are fewer real users on the platform than stated. And since there are fewer of them, then the price of advertising on Facebook should be lower.

Source: Financial Times Source: Financial Times

The second problem is the profitability of advertising as such. I analyzed in detail the plot with the concept of inadequate advertising prices in the idea for ViacomCBS. In order not to repeat myself, I will only note that advertising spending does not strongly correlate with sales rates. Thus, a radical cut in advertising spending did not prevent car sales from recovering quickly after the spring quarantine. The same thing happened with alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks.

A number of advertisers can logically conclude from the pandemic situation that you can spend less on advertising and get the same amount. Or, at least, you can blackmail Facebook with the possibility of leaving in order to get a discount: “You draw clicks from dead souls for us here, until we see the results from them in the form of sales, come on, lower the prices.”

Facebook's gross margin - in accordance with IT traditions - is prohibitive and equal to 81.46%, so advertisers have a very good reason for a large-scale attack. And if - when? If that happens, Facebook's advertising business could falter.

Source: Wall Street Journal Source: Wall Street Journal

How the government can hurt Facebook

In the United States and in some other developed countries, a story has been actively developed in recent years about how disinformation on Facebook allegedly threatens democracy. In this regard, the American legislators have nightmares about the company.

Source: The Economist Source: The Economist

Lawmakers proactively call Facebook executives to the carpet when another conspiracy theory becomes popular enough in the US. The main long-term danger I see is that either the government will regulate Facebook, or Facebook will regulate itself. This will lead to an outflow of users, because insane censorship will reduce the amount of content on the site that is interesting to the solvent public, as a result of which revenue and advertising profit will noticeably drop. Considering that attempts to expand beyond the advertising business have so far failed to bear fruit, this is a problem.

However, even a drop in revenue and profit, paradoxically, may not affect the company's quotes. Facebook is a very conforming company. It may not be running ahead of the locomotive in terms of the implementation of the left-liberal agenda, if compared with the New York Times, but it fulfills all the requirements of this discourse and does not contradict them.

Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in principle, fits into the expectations of progressives. For example, a couple of years ago, he announced that he intended to donate most of his wealth to charity.

I think that by carefully following all the principles of ESG and introducing the “right” ideas, institutional investors will pump up the capitalization of Facebook even in the face of falling profits. But it is not exactly.

There is still a risk that, in the hope of diversifying revenue, Facebook will start spending recklessly on buying a variety of promising startups, and not the fact that they will be profitable. This can be bad for business profitability.

In this regard, the case with the Facebook cryptocurrency project, which, apparently, quietly died, can be considered extremely characteristic. Facebook seems to be bad at expanding into other areas.

At the same time, we still do not know how profitable the company's non-advertising businesses are: there is no data on this in the reporting.