Should brands be living on the Edge?

Ever wondered why certain stories don’t end up in your news feed on Facebook? Why you only get updates from a select few friends and brands? The answer is simple - it’s all to do with their EdgeRank score. EdgeRank is an algorithm created by Facebook, which decides how stories appear in a user’s newsfeed: the higher the score of the story, the more chance it will be shown. However, recent changes to the algorithm have caused uproar, with suggestions that Facebook is making it harder for brands to penetrate their fans’ newsfeeds without paying for the privilege. There have even been accusations that this is an attempt to increase the disappointing stock price of Facebook shares.

How is an EdgeRank calculated?

Every action your friends take is a potential newsfeed story, with Facebook referring to these as ‘Edges’. Every time a friend posts a status update, comments on a status update, tags a photo, joins a fan page, or RSVP's to an event, it generates an "Edge”.

Facebook engineers Ruchi Sanghvi and Ari Steinberg illustrate EdgeRank can be calculated through a combination of three factors -

• Affinity score - Facebook calculates affinity score by looking at explicit actions that users take, factoring in 1) the strength of the action, 2) how close you are with the person who undertook the action and 3) how long ago the action took place. Affinity score measures not just my actions, but also my friends' actions, and their friends' actions. For instance, if you were to comment on a fan page, it's worth more than if a friend commented, which is worth more than if a friend of a friend commented.
• Edge Weight - Each category of edges has a different default weight. For instance, comments on fan pages are worth more than likes on the same page. Each action a user takes creates an edge, with each of these edges, except for clicks, creating a potential story. Facebook changes the edge weights to reflect which type of stories they think user will find most engaging, with photos and videos having a higher weight than links.
• Time Decay - As a story gets older, it’s impact become less keenly felt. As EdgeRank is a running score, when a user logs into Facebook, their newsfeed is populated with edges that have the highest score at that very moment in time.

A brand with a higher score on these three factors is more likely to gain greater exposure. Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook claim that they are committed to provide advertisements that are ‘relevant, engaging and have social context’ leading to a ‘better experience’ for it’s users. As there are currently over a billion pages on Facebook, EdgeRank enables brands to only target 'relevant' users to avoid a tidal wave of irrelevant advertisements spamming a user’s newsfeed.

Is Facebook Edging out brands?

Ever since Facebook began displaying the reach of each Facebook post, many have speculated whether Facebook is artificially limiting reach. In September, Jeff Doak published a blog post detailing that the average reach of his brand page posts had decreased by 24% from 21st September onwards compared to the previous two months.  Doak went further in his critique, accusing Facebook of ‘forcing brands into paying to advertise across the social network’.

Facebook have responded by explaining that the changes reflect their vision to create more absorbing and dynamic content for users, stating on Business Insider that ‘all content should be as engaging as the posts you see from friends and family’. Further, Tim Peterson on AdWeek comments that although certain posts reach have decreased about 50%, interaction is only down between 0.05% - 0.4%. Instead of brands spamming a user’s newsfeed with unwanted content, the changes to the algorithm have targeted those ‘most likely to like, comment or share it’.

The adjustment of EdgeRank should be a catalyst for brands to create campaigns that achieve a better connection with their fanbase than before. However, a downside for altering the algorithm may be that brands increasingly attempt to garner ‘easy’ likes, comments and shares in order to boost their social media reach, without much innovation or variation. ‘Condescending Corporate Brands’ page on Facebook is a rich resource for detailing brands who have been tempted and given into the easy like generators. See the images on the right for a couple of examples.

For the user, these changes represent a significant shift in how a brand will advertise to them on Facebook. The greater need for engaging, interesting campaigns should in theory result in gripping, varied advertising.

In order to remain ahead of the curve, brands must make an effort to understand their audience and establish meaningful strategies to engage and appeal to them, rather than go for easy strategies to drive likes. After all, if your news feed is full of spam, who are you more likely to delete - a friend or a brand?