Is Facebook Too Big to Care?

Is Facebook Too Big to Care?

By VINDU GOEL

MARCH 30, 2014, 1:00 PM  16 Comments

Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has always followed his own instincts when making decisions about the company he founded 10 years ago. But several events over the last week make you wonder: Has the company gotten so successful that it doesn’t care what other people think about it?

On Tuesday, Mr. Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would pay more than $2 billion in cash and stock to buy Oculus VR, a start-up that has spent years developing a virtual reality headset that is still far from ready for public release.

According to various published accounts, including one in the Wall Street Journal, the deal came together quickly. Mr. Zuckerberg decided he wanted to buy the company, and a couple of weeks later, the purchase was announced.

Facebook’s stock fell more than 7 percent as investors and analysts questioned the wisdom of Facebook spending $2 billion in real money to buy a product that will be virtual for another year or more. But Mr. Zuckerberg has voting control over the company, so he can simply ignore Wall Street as he pursues his vision of the company’s future.

Then there was the company’s unsympathetic reaction to Thursday’s announcement by Eat24, an online food ordering service, that it would shut down its Facebook page on Monday.

In a long, funny “breakup letter to Facebook,” Eat24 recounted all the reasons that brands are unhappy with Facebook. The biggest complaint: Facebook has changed its algorithms over the last couple of years to highlight more posts by individuals and bury posts from brands — unless, of course, a brand wants to pay for ads to promote its posts.

“Truth be told, your actions make us feel like you don’t respect us. Maybe you think our food-related pick-up lines and sexy tater tots memes come out of nowhere, but we spend a lot of time trying to make people happy,” Eat24 wrote. “What do you do in return? You take them and you hide them from all our friends.”

A Facebook spokesman, Brandon McCormick, posted a response on Eat24’s Facebook page essentially telling the delivery company not to slam the door too hard on the way out.

“We used to love your jokes about tacquitos and 420 but now they don’t seem so funny,” he wrote. “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 and what we have come to realize is people care about those things more than sushi porn.”

In the long run, the departure of one brand from Facebook is a blip in the feed. Advertisers continue to flock to the service. The research firm eMarketer projects that Facebook will bring in $10.75 billion in digital ad revenue this year, accounting for 7.82 percent of the global market, up from 5.83 percent last year. In the fast-growing mobile arena, Facebook is expected to get 21.7 percent of ad revenue worldwide in 2014, up from 17.5 percent last year, according to eMarketer.

But Eat24’s concerns echo those from other companies, which complain that Facebook keeps changing the rules on how brands can use the service to get their message out. Nate Elliott, a Forrester analyst, wrote this month, “Every day I talk to brands that are disillusioned with Facebook and are now placing their bets on other social sites.”

Facebook says that the changes are meant to give more relevant content to its 1.2 billion users and get them to spend more time on the service.

Maybe Eat24 is trying to hit the top of the news feed the wrong way.

In the spirit of its rant about Facebook’s problems, I have a suggestion: Instead of posting jokes about bear anatomy and dietary preferences to sell pizzas and burritos, Eat24 could lay out a futuristic strategy to deliver customer orders via unmanned aerial delivery vehicles. (Drones, like cute cats, seem to be one of those topics that are inherently viral.)

Even Mr. Zuckerberg — who just laid out his own vision for a fleet of laser-wielding, Internet access drones — might hit the like button on that.