Facebook Exec Snarkily Confirms Brands’ Big Fear: Their Content Isn’t Important
Reply to Eat24's defection
With their organic reach plummeting, many brands worry that Facebook is becoming indifferent to their wants and needs. Well, that fear seems justified, based on a catty comment from Facebook's PR chief.
Food site Eat24 cooked up a lot of buzz with its "breakup letter" to Facebook, in which it said it was closing down its page (which has 70,000 likes)—saying Facebook is becoming a pay-for-play service instead of a true social network. Such criticisms are nothing new. What is new is that a Facebook executive responded with a big middle finger.
In a snarky response on Eat24's page, Brandon McCormick, Facebook's director of global communications/monetization, said the site's "food porn" content simply isn't that interesting to Facebook users who would rather hear about breaking news and see photos shared by their friends.
"There is some serious stuff happening in the world and one of my best friends just had a baby and another one just took the best photo of his homemade cupcakes," McCormick wrote. "What we have come to realize is people care about those things more than sushi porn (but if we are in the mood for it, we know where to find it Eat24!)."
Here's the full text of his comment, via Digiday:
Clearly McCormick was imitating Eat24's snarky tone, and his response is commendably candid. But for many brand marketers, it will also come off as confirmation that Facebook sees organic brand content as something its users want phased out.
UPDATE: As promised, Eat24 appears to have deleted its page from Facebook as of April 1.
