Sanjay Mehta, Jt CEO of Social Wavelength, gives a simple explanation of the concept of Facebook Edgerank. That concept that creates the filter for any FB user to get a selected range of updates from his friends or brand pages. The same concept due to which only an average of 16% of a page's fans see the page's updates, on their walls. The background of this concept and the concept of reach generator are explained in this presentation. A video blog version of this presentation has also been uploaded, and same can be viewed at http://youtu.be/0twWXYimUk4

1. Demystifying FacebookEdgerank
and Reach Generator
Sanjay Mehta
Joint CEO, Social Wavelength

2. When Facebook revealed..
• That only 16% of fans receive updates of a
brand page,
• That Facebook was going to provide a way for
brand pages to reach a larger part of their
own fan base,
• That Facebook was going to charge for that
extra reach…
ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE… !

3. The shouting started..
• “Hey, it’s our own fan base..”
• “We paid you, to acquire many of these fans
in the first place – now you want us to pay you
again, to reach them??”
• “You didn’t tell this to us before?!”
• “Why would you not show our updates to all
of our fans??”
• “YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO US..!!”

4. Stronger words were used too..
• “This is cheating..”
• “Creepy way for Facebook to make money!”
• “They are purposely not letting our updates
get to our fans, and want us to pay for that!”
• “Their stock’s going nowhere, so this is the
way they penalize brands!!”
• And then once again, “THEY ARE CHEATING!!”

5. But was that the real story?
• No, it was not.
• The reality was not communicated too well
• That allowed all these strong and negative
views to emerge
• Recently I saw the head of a digital agency on
TV saying, “if they had told us two years
back, we’d have had other strategies!”
• Yeah, right!

6. But I don’t blame him..
• Well, except for the fact that he should have
known better!
• Lot of people got that first impression..
• That Facebook made us build fan bases, which
we thought we could reach without needing
to pay anymore thereafter..
• And now, they’re going back on their word,
and making us pay to reach our own fans..

7. The reality is different..
• And I will try to explain what it is
• It is all about demystification
• Of the so-called Edgerank concept of
Facebook
• As much as about the Reach Generator option
that Facebook offers – to potentially reach
upto 75% of your fan base, from an otherwise
average of 16%

8. Let’s start at the beginning..
• When people had a Facebook profile
• Had a few friends to whom they were
connected on Facebook
• And had a few brand pages that they had liked
• The friends and the brand pages would put
out occasional status updates
• And one received all of them, chronologically
• All was well!

9. What changed??
• We had more and more of our friends getting
connected to us – school friends, childhood
buddies, neighbors, ex-colleagues, college
pals, current teammates, the PTA members,
the neighborhood community of which you
were a member, 3rd cousins, in-laws, etc. etc.
• We also started liking many brand pages,
some applications, some games and what not
• So what??

10. Well, they all “talked”…a lot!
• Many friends = many status updates flowing
your way; all day long!
• Brand pages were active – they had a ‘reach’
to you, without the spam folder in the way
• And then there were the games and the apps
and they wanted to share a lot of updates
• Sooo..ourFacebook walls or our news feeds
became busy, and not all updates were so
great

11. It was a worrisome situation!
• If a user came to Facebook, got a bunch of
updates on his wall, and only few were what he
wanted to see
• The rest were junk of all kind
• The risk was that he’d start disliking Facebook
• And not wanting to return, that frequently
• That is NOT what Facebook was supposed to be

12. Facebook needed to do something
• To make sure that Facebook remained
interesting to it’s users
• While it was good to connect to a lot of
friends and like a lot of brand pages, finally, a
user has to get what he’d like the most
• Facebook figured that it’s duty to it’s users
was “to give them updates they are most likely
to engage with..”

13. Essentially then, what Facebook’s
mandate for users, is:
“What is the most
interesting thing that we
show to the user?”

14. So how did Facebook decide…
• What it was that was most important to the
user?
• Obviously, it had tons and tons of data to
learn from, and based on that, come up with
the strategy for this..
• And what emerged out of this, is what we now
know as the Edgerank algorithm of Facebook

15. But let’s keep the jargon aside..
• What Facebook started out with, was to “give
users the most interesting things they’d like to
get”
• Of all the different types of updates that a
user used to receive those days, Facebook
figured three clear factors that were critical
from a user’s point of view

16. 1. What’s your affinity?
• Clearly, if you like someone’s updates, you
perhaps want to receive their future updates
too..
• So an interaction that you have with an
update of a friend, or that of a brand page, it
shows you have an affinity to that friend/page
• So your ‘affinity’ to a friend or a page is a
factor that Facebook gives weightage to

17. 2. The ‘heavier’ the better
• “A picture says a 1000 words”; so also, a
Facebook update with an image is more
interesting than a plain text update
• By the same token, a video is even more
interesting than a picture, especially in these
days of better bandwidth availability
• So Facebook figures that a “heavier” update
will be more interesting, and gives it weightage

18. 3. Fresh is best!
• Old updates are not that exciting
• People love to know the latest stuff
• So time is the other crucial aspect - Facebook
assigns maximum points for the most recent
updates

19. So this defines EdgeRank
• The sum total impact of the three factors, viz.
Affinity, Weight, and Time, then decide what
updates do manage to land up on your feed
• This is also referred to as the EdgeRank
algorithm of Facebook
• So much for the jargon… simply
speaking, those whose updates I connect
with, ones with pics and videos, and recent
ones, are “interesting” for me..

20. So where does 16% come?
• When FB said that an average brand page
reaches only 16% of it’s fans, it looked like
they block the updates from reaching the
other 84%.
• Reality is that based on EdgeRank described
earlier, on average, a brand’s updates only
make it through to 16% of their audience, and
not more

21. What should a brand do, then?
• Of course, the first part is to improve their
updates from all EdgeRank factors
• But different people like different things
• Also people are online at different times
• And some have already ignored brand updates
for long
• Then how can brand recover on weight, time
or affinity factors??

22. The solution..
• …is generally a long term one. Slowly but
surely, keep working on improving EdgeRank
parameters on your updates
• Gradually keep winning back, your fans
• But that will take ages?!
• That’s where Facebook offered an answer for
a quicker solution
• The Reach Generator..

23. Jump the fence..
• The user’s Facebook wall has a fence and a
wicket gate; those whose updates satisfy the
EdgeRank algorithm get past the wicket gate
• So as a brand that did not make it past the
wicket gate, FB offers you a way to jump the
fence
• By paying the Reach Generator fee!
• So THEN you can win back the fan with
content again..and increase affinity!

24. Hope some things got demystified?
• Don’t curse FB so much..
• Think search engines. What if Google showed
you everything that was supposedly about the
search term you asked for?
• What if it showed you chronological matches?
• It doesn’t. It applies some algorithmic factors.
And gives what you might be searching for!
• So does Facebook now. Not much different!

25. For more information, contact:
Sanjay Mehta
Joint CEO @ Social Wavelength
Twitter: @sm63