EdgeRank on the consumer side.

As we reported earlier, it appears Facebook (at least for now) gets to dictate what posts we get to see in terms of BOTH friends and pages we choose to follow. This is disconcerting as not only an administrator of fan pages but also as an end-user of the worlds largest social media network

Rest assured, the people who used to post interesting and relevant status updates on their Facebook page are still making those posts (or at least they should be), what we as consumers need to do is figure out the best method for getting the updates and information we have all “subscribed” to.

If you have a personal profile on Facebook you’ll want to pay attention to this. If you administer pages for yourself or others, you may want to figure out how to pass this information along to your audience or share this blog article where you can.

There are definitely two sides to this issue. Some folks point fingers and lay blame on EdgeRank and Facebook for causing this and others understand what’s at play here. We are not going to take the position where we complain or point fingers because we know that isn’t going to change things. Understanding what this is all about and how we work within the system is the best approach.

Here’s the understanding part:

The purpose of EdgeRank is to bring to the surface content that is important to the user. While it also knocks down and hides “bad content”, the fact is if the provider of the content posts content that is not engaging, Facebook takes that as a sign that the users don’t want to see the posts.

The flip side to this is if the content provider creates posts that users like, comment on and share, Facebook takes that as a sign that you do in fact want to see the post.

Here’s the solution part:

So if you as the end-user are really interested in continuing to see the updates that the businesses you follow post – interact with those posts. Like them, share them, comment on them. By doing this you will continue to see what you indicated you were interested in seeing from the beginning.

What else can you do?

In the next post, we are working on step-by-step instructions on what you as the consumer can do to take back control of the posts you will see.