This second post in a series about the Fediverse (this one, somewhat more tangentially) focuses on the usefulness of Facebook pages as they relate to the future of TEN as it has been used as a Full-Length Blog Link MicroBlogging-page (of sorts). NOTE: I’m not going to be looking at all of the other ways Facebook is a problem, and if you want to look into Fediverse alternatives there are a few including Diaspora

Not wishing to re-hash the entirety of my previous post a quick refresher about Twinkblogs…Links to full-length Blogs posted as Microblog entries that aren’t intended to convey much other than a title and some brief text, drawing potential listeners to the episode in question. In that regard it’s the size of the audience you can reach through that channel that matters the most.

So far as feedback via mentions goes, if you’re interested in comments on your podcast then that’s something worth exploring and whilst Facebook had this functionality I seldom got comments via that page. Any feedback from readers is welcomed to either myself via the feedback form or via the Fediverse directly to me personally.

Federation support may someday include embedded audio and the simplicity of being able to consolidate into a single window is quite appealing. Unfortunately I remain concerned that such functionality is unlikely to be as fully featured or as useful as a dedicate podcast client application. For this reason until future support for federated posting via Hugo with embedded audio becomes a reality, it will remain off the table.

Facebook Page Algorithm

Lifting the mostly uninteresting curtain behind the TEN Facebook Page, the same number of posts occurred in 2018 as 2017. In 2018 only 3 Likes in 12 months, and all but six Notifications I received on the page came from Facebook helpfully suggesting “…people who like Engineered haven’t heard from you in a while…Write a post…” Uh-huh. Thanks. The reach of these posts expressed as a percentage of Like(s) in the month of December averaged 22%. Some 15 months earlier it exceeded 100% regularly.

Early in its life, Facebook encouraged businesses, groups, organisations to host their pages on Facebook for organic growth and a wide distribution. However changes to Facebooks algorithms in the past few years with dozens of weighting factors now used to tweak what people see in their timeline makes trying to get organic visibility essentially impossible unless you want to A) try to game the system (sounds like a full time job) or B) pay $43AUD to reach an additional 3,400 people per day, so claims another ‘helpful’ Notification from Facebook on the page. Uh-huh. No thanks.

Future Plans

Currently when a podcast episode goes up on TEN, an RSS Feed scraper takes a copy of the title, a URL link to the episode, then publishes it to a Mastodon account. From there a second script takes that and re-tweets it to the Engineered_Net Twitter account and Facebook is manually added later. With a significant following on Twitter the Engineered_Net account will remain for the immediate future. However the same can not be said of Facebook.

Based on the above Twinkblog rationale, manual posting requirements (Facebooks API requires regular re-authentication which is annoying), Facebook asking for money to ‘give back’ organic reach, and finally with my move to gradually step away from Facebook, I’ve decided to close the The Engineered Network page on Facebook. All other subscription methods will remain unchanged including RSS to Causality, Analytical and Pragmatic as well as the TEN Master Feed. My recommendation is that people that have Liked TEN on Facebook and use it for show notifications either follow the TEN Twitter account @Engineered_Net or better still, jump on the Fediverse somewhere and following me @[email protected] where I’m active every day.

Failing that just subscribe in your podcast player app of choice. There’s PocketCasts on Android and iOS, Overcast on iOS, and Apples Podcast app is also much improved in recent times as well.

Reflecting on podcast distribution for a moment: It’s funny (okay it isn’t…it’s brilliant!) how an open standard like RSS that powers podcast subscription and distribution remains the best option, whilst centralised platforms like Facebook, once they get big, turn-coat on everyone and charge for visibility. Hopefully this explains why so many people are leaving their Facebook pages and highlights some of the risks of using centralised, company controlled sites for notifications and distribution.