One thing to note, when you said "my personal feeling is that if I follow a brand it's because I want to see their updates", the tricky think about facebook is that you don't "follow" a brand like you do on Twitter, you just "like" them. In my opinion, it's a small but important distinction. Just because you enjoy a certain brand doesn't mean you actually want to know every little thing they're doing.
Exactly. At first I was all "I'll like every FB page of things I like in RL". But then I was getting annoyed at some of the crap that these pages were putting into my feed so I "unliked" pretty much everything. I wish there was a way to "like" something so that it is reflected in your interests and what not, but NOT get their updates. Maybe there is and I haven't seen it.
When you click to remove a post from your newsfeed, facebook prompts you with "unsubscribe from this page's updates" — there's also a tab in the top right of these stories (and of people's updates) that allows you to set the frequency you receive news from them.
Yeah, great point here. Facebook really emphasized this difference awhile back when they started allowing users to "Like" a Page, but then choose to hide it from their News Feed.
This allows me, as a Facebook user, to complete my profile and declare that I like something, even if the marketing that the associated Page is doing isn't something I want to see.
This ensures that profile information remains accurate, which is critical for ad targeting - people don't start unliking things they actually like, just to avoid annoying marketing. The interest graph remains intact even when brands make poor marketing decisions.
Do people associate liking things with "completing their profiles"?
Maybe I've been on the other side for too long, but I equate liking a page with opting into their facebook marketing content, and I unlike if I want to opt out.
Yes, that's how FB poses it, as part of your profile. For instance, "What music do you like?" You type in some groups, and that counts as liking them. Suddenly, you get to see news about each concert, blu-ray, etc. they're doing, right in your feed. Not a great experience.
I'm not sure why anyone would assume a very casual social "hey I like X" is equivalent to "subscribe".
People make that assumption because facebook is filled with social people rather than anti-social people who worry that someone they 'like' might actually talk to them.
In normal social circles there an expectation that the you want to hear about things you 'like'. For instance if in real life I have a friend who 'likes' classical music then when I hear something about classical music I will talk to them about it.
Also like is not like subscribe because the idea behind subscribing is that you receive everything. For instance if I 'subscribed' to a magazine I would be rather upset if they only sent me every 7th issue, or only sent me issues when the newspaper had not arrived.
> Just because you enjoy a certain brand doesn't mean you actually want to know every little thing they're doing.
Twitter is more obvious semantically, but heavy Likers of brands on Facebook already understand the implication, and increasingly so will everyone else, regardless of the terminology. For me it's basically to the point where I only Like things that are owned or run by people that I actually know.
I never liked anything on facebook (via a 'like' button) but I do have several likes.
Before the facebook feed , before even the facebook wall, the personal information field of your profile was a text blob. Over time facebook parsed this information and matched it to pages, giving me likes.
Now i get updates from films in my feed because 7 years ago I added them to a text field called 'movies/tv'
Doesn't bother me because I hardly use facebook anymore. But it is interesting to think how it has changed.
One thing to note, when you said "my personal feeling is that if I follow a brand it's because I want to see their updates", the tricky think about facebook is that you don't "follow" a brand like you do on Twitter, you just "like" them. In my opinion, it's a small but important distinction. Just because you enjoy a certain brand doesn't mean you actually want to know every little thing they're doing.