Social media giant Facebook has been getting more aggressive in its efforts to win back inactive users and those that have turned their backs on the platform.
Facebook utilizes various means in its attempts to engage disinterested users by sending frequent email alerts about the social media activities of inactive users’ friends and contacts to giving out instructions on how to log back to Facebook, even if the users have not requested for such “guidance.”
One user Rishi Gorantala, 35 years old from Chile, has deleted the Facebook app from his phone for over a year now. He is also being bombarded by email alerts from Facebook that are increasingly becoming intrusive and annoying.
Gorantala said: “The content of mail they send is essentially trying to trick you. Like someone tried to access my account so I should go and log in.”
The social media giant already counts more than 2 billion people logging in monthly. In fact, it has never failed to grow its user base. In its aggressive desire to continuously beat investors’ expectations consistently as far as user numbers are concerned, the platform deems it crucial to retain people as Gorantala as much as recruiting new members. As such users who are logging into the site less often but aren’t fully disconnected yet are receiving more and more email prompts to “come back”’ to Facebook. Sometimes, such users receive multiple prompts a day via emails or even through texts.
The alerts emphasize what users are “missing out on” by not being active on Facebook. Various screenshots and reports of users around the world testify to such aggressive drive of Facebook.
The social media giant also does not spare even its active or highly-engaged users.
Facebook utilizes the reminder boxes at the top of the news feed to show
users‘ memories or anniversaries of friendship with close pals or even for more trivial “milestones”—like being tagged in 10 photos with someone or getting 100 heart reactions.
Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said earlier this year that his platform will rethink the formula for its news feed to put a greater emphasis on posts from friends and family, downplaying- on the other hand- content from brands and media. Facebook said it will emphasize “time well spent,” targeting meaningful interactions that will be “better for users long-term.”
Facebook also warned that the changes could cause some measures of engagement to go down, because people may spend less time on the app reading articles and watching videos.
It could also be that Zuckerberg and his associates are finding latest trends alarming. In the U.S., minutes spent on the site are declining, according to measurements by both Nielsen and Comscore, even if the trend is healthy globally. Growth in daily users has been registering the slowest numbers ever.
Source:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-01-31/facebook-really-wants-you-to-come-back
