Come January, Facebook users will be breathing a sigh of relief. The company is making sure that it trims down pushed or promoted posts from company pages on a user's news feeds but businesses will bear the brunt.
Companies that have spent lakhs of rupees acquiring fans on the social networking site will now have to advertise every single post. Critics say by disallowing interactions or making posts paid, Facebook is questioning the basis on which it was created, i.e. to be a social network where interactions can happen.
Simply put, there will be a few major changes that will affect the way businesses interact on the platform — companies will have limited ability to promote contests or campaigns here and, more importantly, Facebook has banned 'like-gating', which allowed brands to instruct users to like pages as a way to unlock content or enter contests. By making the algorithm change, Facebook can no longer be relied on to drive traffic.