Wait a minute? Facebook is wildly successful, I hear you say. You are right. It is wildly successful. It was built on multiple game dynamics and mechanics but they got something horribly wrong. Let us first walk through the top game dynamics in play.
- Friends – How often have you felt compelled to accumulate as many friends on FB when you first sign on? It is a natural response behaviour to a social game. Your friend count reflects your social status and that is important.
- Likes – This is social sharing at its very best. The Like button is a game mechanic that focuses on the user’s innate need for social validation. It is designed for the explorer, the socializer and the Achiever. Achievers count the number of likes. Socializers use that as a way to discuss content. Explorers let you know they were there and read that.
- Followers – Social status with friends starts to matter less when everybody reaches a certain number. Facebook released the followers to add additional bragging rights. This meant you have a clear differentiator from the average Joe/Jane.
So where did Facebook mess up?
Recently, in a bid to increase revenue, Facebook altered their newsfeed algorithm. You no longer received information from everybody but from only those that you engaged with most. This also meant that your posts now went out to only 10% of your audience. For most people, that is about 50 friends.
Imagine the dynamic now. Any post you make has a maximum of 20 likes or shares at most. Your posts are no longer viral. The kick you received from social feedback, from friends, from the Facebook ecosystem has diminished just as the great content has now diminished on your news feed. The equivalent is to show you only 10% of your farm in Farmville. You have a 100 acre farm but here just take care of 10 acres. A real world equivalent would be, you have 1 lakh in the Bank but you can only access 10,000 at any time.
Guess what does that do to a game?
Sudarsan Ravi
Who am I? – I am a Rodinhoods fanboy. When I am not on this forum, I spend time building a enterprise gamification company where we apply game mechanics to business areas making them fun. Our first product is RippleHire where we are transforming the way talent is sourced in the enterprise.
Image Courtesy – www.androidauthority.com
Jack John
Good implication observed by Sudarshan
Abhik Prasad
Sudarshan, you have raised a very valid point but consider the flip side too…If fb were to make ALL the content available on your timeline (including from all your friends and pages you have liked), it would lead to information overload almost to the point of spamming and users would lose interest.
I think what they are trying to drive towards is engagement via more relevant content for each user.
cheers
abhik
asha chaudhry
abhik… there used to be this provision of “hiding posts, seeing all posts, seeing important posts” of friends/pages, right?
i can’t seem to see that feature anymore 🙁
Vinay Chhoda
Asha / Ravi,
If you want to see every post from everyone, go to your friend’s individual page, hover your pointer over the friends button and you will see the 2nd and 3rd option in the list that appears as a) show in newsfeed and b) settings.
– make sure ‘show in newsfeed’ is checked.
– Click on settings and you can then select if you want to see all updates, most updates or only important updates from that friend in your newsfeed.
asha chaudhry
hey thanks for the “settings” tip vinay – earlier it used to be available right next to the post itself…
asha chaudhry
p.s: sudarsan… i’m very keen to hear more about RippleHire. the idea “gamefication of employee referrals” is intriguing… do share more on your startup when you can!