The upcoming Facebook change seems like small potatoes – changing the term Facebook “Fan” to the more vague “Like” – but in reality, it’s a negative switch for 400 million Facebook users, and the only one benefiting is Facebook. This announcement comes (yet again) in the wake of a rival’s innovation announcement: Twitter’s @anywhere explained at this year’s South By Southwest (SXSW). The @anywhere initiative is a very ambitious play to make Twitter more ubiquitous by essentially integrating “tweet this” functionality across all major web properties. The Fan-to-Like initiative is designed to do much the same thing; Facebook wants to be able to have little “Like”s everywhere, which are much more conducive for spontaneous engagement than the heavier commitment-sounding “Become a Fan”. As a matter of fact, studies show that Facebook “Like”s are clicked three times more often than “Become a Fan”s – which seems like it makes perfect sense because the number of things that you can “Become a Fan” of (only a couple thousand brand pages) pales in comparison to the number of things that you can “Like” on Facebook (comments, videos, pictures, almost anything – virtually infinite).

It’s obvious that the switch from “Fan” to “Like” is a boon for Facebook engagement both across the Internet and within Facebook itself, but it’s also a benefit for Facebook as far as marketing and advertising. Now they can expect higher traffic from Facebook ads because (again) people are more likely to click a “Like” than a “Become a Fan”. Additionally, Facebook will love to build all kinds of case studies showing how great engagement is now that they’re using a loaded metric. Why? Because it will get more companies building Fan pages and buying Facebook ads. And the beautiful dance continues…

Who is the only party that this change is bad for? Only the 400 million who actually have to use the thing. Facebook has spent the last few years with a “Like” button that has a clear meaning – very simply, that you like something. They have spent roughly the same amount of time defining behavior around the term “Become a Fan” – that is, that you would like to opt into receiving messages (many of them promotional) from a brand and have information about that brand appear in your news feed. By pulling this veritable bait-and-switch, they are going to end up with either a lot of pissed off Facebook users, or a lot of Facebook users who decide to filter out the promotional messages from these brands in their news feeds. Unfortunately for Facebook, neither scenario results, at least in the long run, in more ad sales. By making this opt-in process less distinct, all it will do is create more noise; something we can all do without.

My point is that no major web company of the 21st century – not YouTube, not eBay, not Amazon, not anybody – has ever gotten to the top or flourished there by doing things that benefit only themselves. As Google just found out, based on the backlash from Buzz, when users feel like they’re…well…being used, you’re going to have some ‘splainin’ to do.

Tags: facebook, twitter

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Posted in social networks by Jed No Comments Yet