Always a maverick, Mark Cuban says he’s doubling down on Twitter, experimenting with the new MySpace and exploring Tumblr as a new home for the Dallas Mavs after getting fed up with how Facebook is treating brand pages. He’s not alone among an increasing number of brands questioning how Facebook juggles relevancy — using its Edgerank algorithm to dictate how many people see your page’s posts — with an ad program that promises to boost that number if you shell out a few bucks.
“Brands have invested in getting consumers to like their Facebook page with the presumption that every like is created equal, that the brand can reach the user easily. That is not the case,” he told ReadWrite. “I realize that Facebook has never given 100% user coverage to followers of a brand. However it now appears that to extend beyond minimal reach is going to cost brands more money.”
While he’s sticking around on Facebook, Cuban says his team is pushing more to Twitter, exploring Tumblr and Instagram, as well as taking a look at the new MySpace. Today a tweet from MySpace exclaimed, “The Mavs page on #NewMyspace is going to be awesome.”
It all began when Cuban saw Facebook’s advertising prompt to “get more people to see your posts” for $3,000 for one million user impressions, and he sent out a frustrated tweet (below). The Facebook post was seen 27K times, and the Maverick’s Facebook page has 2.3 million likes.
Facebook has defended its algorithm, explaining it filters content to ensure the news feed experience remains as relevant as possible. “We’ve changed nothing about the way page posts are delivered to fans,” explains Facebook Vadim Lavrusik. “The main point of confusion we’ve seen is that pages don’t realize that their posts were never reaching 100% of fans.”
Cuban puts it another way. “Why would we invest in extending our Facebook audience size if we have to pay to reach them? That’s crazy.”