[graeme]

>They say it's in the name of reducing spam on your news feed, but something tells me that it's just a ruse to route that type of behavior to paid advertisements and to end the free ride for small businesses.

I hear this a lot from small businesses....but really, I'm not interested in most things posted by pages I "like".

Facebook does a pretty good job of gauging my interest. I'm very interested in 2-3 pages I liked, and Facebook shows me all of their stuff, usually at the top of my feed.

Other stuff is sporadic, usually just the most popular of that pages posts. The rest is stuff from my friends.

Why should it be different? It's not like I have the attention to see every post from pages I've liked.

[mercer]

I think part of the problem is the meaning of 'like'. It conflates liking the 'thing' (band, store, café, etc.) with 'following' this thing. In some cases I'd love to follow a person or entity because I care about the updates, but in some cases I just want to 'like' something to show other people how unique I am (where 'I' is an younger version of myself).

[lifeisstillgood]

Presumably the (external) sites you liked you have also. I sites from your Facebook feed after liking them, hence increasing their weight. As such I guess the answer for small businesses is simple - you need an engaged audience and then Facebook is another way to reach that engaged audience.

Thinking if Facebook as an advertising medium is IMO wrong - it's like an email list to people who don't check their email.

Of course the problem is now how do you reach potential members of your audience before they become engaged?