In late June, Facebook once again announced a News Feed algorithm change?this time to focus more on friends and family content, and less on brands and publishers?a change that?s not all that surprising since Facebook is organized around who you know.
This modification, however, is making huge waves in the publishing world, since publishers and content houses have relied on Facebook as an effective way to get in front of consumers.
Now, for publishers who have already in many ways lost control of how their content is accessed, consumed and monetized, they?re faced with Facebook throttling their access yet further. And that?s not all. Facebook is also closing its News Feed application, Paper, further curtailing choice of outlets and hastening a consolidation of power that benefits no one but Facebook. Yikes! But publishers are not quite in as dire straits as it may appear, even with this seeming abandonment of Facebook. For one thing, many consumers are starting to peel back on social usage.
A recent study conducted by SimilarWeb found that Americans spent less time on the four largest social networks in the first part of this year than they did during the same time period of 2015. More specifically, the study saw a 36.16 percent decrease on Instagram, 27.94 percent on Twitter, 19.21 percent on Snapchat and 6.7 percent on Facebook.
While the survey did not explore motivations for this decrease, one could argue that it?s because social media networks? foundations are built ar...