[johnchristopher]

Right now I am working as some kind of developer/marketing/communication 5 legged unicorn and Facebook-based PR is the go-to strategy for everything and anything. I also hear some organisations thinking out loud about completely ditching their websites in favour of Facebook/Twitter presence. (tourism sector)

[vgy7ujm]

It's madness. And only works because the train is already rolling and most people are blind of what FB is doing behind the curtains.

Twitter is actually OK in my opinion as it is obviously a more PR like channel by design. (Also Instagram for showcasing new products etc.)

I think that FB sites are a poor substitute for well designed unique websites with depth and relevant information.

The question is how to get viewers or subscribers. But since FB started out as a "personal/friends" service I think that ads and PR will soon be perceived as spam. When people start waking up that is.

[netsharc]

The walled-gardenness is what annoys me. It's your communication and publishing medium owned by several big corps. Want to post piratebay links? Facebook blocks you from doing that. Want to post a link to a Chrome extension that lets you filter FB, remove ads, hide posts based on keywords? They block that calling fbpurity.com a malicious website.

Want to post a pic of the Statue of David? Too much nudity. The Vietnamese girl running away from napalm? Same.

Twitter and GMail ar a bit better, but the worry is there. Some Chinese people were worried because their phone disconnected after they said particular keywords. Coincidence, or actual real time monitoring? On Facebook we can see that they are actively monitoring and censoring us, but we keep using them!

Imagine of things like the pipeline protest get classified as "terror events" and Trump-supporting Zuckerberg (Facebook hosted a party with right wing website The Daily Caller, who used Facebook Live Video to spread Trump propaganda to great success, guess who wanted to celebrate that) agrees that talking about it amounts to "support of terrorism". The current occupying regime can even provide fake evidence to suggest "terrorist level" aggression, and if the people on the ground want to refute it, hah, which communication medium do they want to use that would allow that attempt?

[johnchristopher]

> It's madness. And only works because the train is already rolling and most people are blind of what FB is doing behind the curtains.

I basically gave up explaining that because I have to explain how to use FB as a promotion tool and I can't undermine it at the same time because I would lose credibility and leave people more confused than when they came.

> Twitter is actually OK in my opinion as it is obviously a more PR like channel by design. (Also Instagram for showcasing new products etc.)

No, unfortunately it really depends on the niche/market you are following or trying to get into.

> I think that FB sites are a poor substitute for well designed unique websites with depth and relevant information.

> The question is how to get viewers or subscribers. But since FB started out as a "personal/friends" service I think that ads and PR will soon be perceived as spam. When people start waking up that is.

Ditto. With websites we have full control of our statistics and data. I sometimes think that messenger/bot will be the demise of social networks. If somehow marketers can get people to subscribe to bots (with a common API that would abstract whether you are using whatsapp, telegram, etc.) then social networks leash would loosen a bit. That would mean we would be back to something looking a lot like e-mail but whatev'.

I am not tailored for marketing anyway so I am pretty sure I am talking bs.

[AznHisoka]

What exactly is their "strategy" besides just posting every single PR news piece on their FB feed?

Or am I just naive in believing it's something sophisticated?

[johnchristopher]

I don't have yet the whole vocabulary figured out. This is first hand report from a colleague working in another autonomous sister branch of my org. The plan would be to go full FB/insta/twitter only and it's still in the 'what if' stage.