Is it possible that Facebook sells you an audience that would have found you anyway?
I’ve given thought to how a new web site or business quickly grows an audience without social. With search engines, the site still needs to be “seen” by the engine and compete with more established sites.
There are many spontaneous undercurrents in the pond of the Internet. It is also the reason why fake news are so hard to root out.
I feel there's quite a bit to unpack here. Social media was sold to us as being a way to engage your users more closely... yet it seems the opposite is true.
As it is, this quote is a little misleading. Additional context from the article:
> "If we had remained on Facebook, we might have had another 5% growth," she said. "But even if we throttled our growth ... it's brought us a lot of positives."
> Donations from readers went up, for example, once word of Stuff's decision leaked out. Boucher said the company's newsrooms felt the impact, too.
> "We can definitely see a change in the way people react to us and talk to us" she said. "Hearing anecdotally from journalists, they feel like they've been able to get interviews they would not have got before. They feel that it has really has contributed to people trusting us more, thinking about us as an organization with a clear set of values."
Based on the rest of article, sounds like they value being a trusted source more then getting more eyes. Given that Facebook and the like are a firehose of truths and lies, I wish more news sources would take this stance. (And do deep dives.)
Explanation? You expect that the economy will eventually recover--so why essentially give the company away? [The only thing which comes to mind is a very heavy debt load which the new owner assumes.]
