Brands don't fit into this picture. You don't 'like' a picture of coca cola from a crazy party at mcdonalds' house. Your interactions on the comments of posts by a brand are probably one way, and with predominantly strangers. The rest of your personal network is unrelated.
Thus, sponsored posts work against edge rank. There are two big examples of sponsored posts. First is say, promoting a personal story or life event (it's a boy!). Second is corporate to consumer say, Best Buy is having a huge sale on something. In the first case if a story is truly important it would have been picked up by the algorithm and social forces alike. In the second, most people don't believe corporations are people, and their social interactions with them are typically unwelcome to their personal network. There's no social pressure to like a picture of Jones soda's new flavor as opposed to Jenny's new baby.
All in all, I think mark is right for the wrong reasons. FB's business model runs counter to its primary product offering. They're still experimenting and I hope they end up with something that makes sense to a social network.
Suddenly that new product launch is as important as a new baby. And that new feature is something you're expected to like etc. etc.
How does that fit? They usually still advertise these things through a "corporate" page ...
Cuban's doubts of the efficacy of edgerank (or perhaps his doubts stemming from not knowing the purpose of edgerank) comes from him not really knowing facebook from the perspective of a consumer/user and only knowing it primarily as a broadcast tool (I've seen his posts - he's only there to broadcast). But before, I defend edgerank/facebook on this, it should be acknowledged that this guy and many like him (broadcaster for their brands) are the ones that pay the bills - and it will be interesting to see who Facebook begins to cater more to over the next few years... because advertisers' and users' interests, despite what facebook wants us to believe, will likely always be at odds with each other.
That's funny, because as a "regular user" he perfectly voiced my opinion of (what I now know to be called) edgerank. I see and feel the facebook filterbubble quite frequently, its much easier to notice and more annoying than google's. I just don't voice my distaste for it very much because people just write off my opinion as being a "hater".
My point being that this has been in the works for a long time and is part of their long term strategy. They will continue to tweak their algorithm causing the occasional outrage, backing off, then coming back even more forcefully.
Remember, Zuck has stated that his mission is to train people how to share their info publicly. Expect that "training" to continue, including for advertisers.
Perhaps the option persists because I use Facebook in a limited way, always through a dedicated device - primarily, through its own virtual machine, occasionally on an old smartphone with no SIM over WiFi, never via my primary browser or active cellphone.
In my case, Facebook's data mining only sees a reflection of my Facebook related activities. It is tempting to share more, but I have better places to subject people to what's on my mind.
Let me rephrase that, I know why they make it difficult (more connection = more data), but it really detracts from the experience. I don't want to spend 3 hours clicking on individuals profiles and clicking 4 different times to do one action (the "friends link", individual profile page, the "unlike" and the confirm button).
I know, speaking for myself, I use facebook drastically different than I did a few years ago, and I would love to clean up some of the friend list I've accumulated over the years.
Seeing all of the word choice and grammar mistakes by derrick503 made me cringe.
