It's really funny having gotten rid of Facebook years ago, seeing people talk about how they're "trying to cut back" instead of just dropping the dumb thing. It's like listening to drug addicts.
Aside from this, in my home country, the Philippines, SMS & telephone services are expensive. Being a 3rd world archipelago country, infrastructure in the provinces is so bad that cabled & optic internet is not available for a lot of people. Facebook is a gem in my country in that they provide free internet for anyone utilising FB's services with a smartphone (you can buy cheap 2nd hand android phones there for less than $20). The folks here use FB's services to keep themselves updated with the world as well as to call/chat. It's a great way to connect and recently people don't even memorise their phone numbers anymore and instead, people ask each other for their facebook.
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-12-07/how-rodri...
I'll put 5 SCL, or 10 schrute-bucks, on the whole purpose of this site being to build up market interest so they can sell it to Facebook.
Edit: had to go for a smoke half way through that site, mustered up the strength to finish reading. Their roadmap for the number of employees they have is beyond laughable. I'm not entirely convinced this isn't satire
Sadly, owning a business it’s pretty much required to deal with Facebook. Unless I want to spend five times as much on traditional advertising for less than half of the results.
My intuition is that the effectiveness of algorithmic advertising is largely over-stated. I'd really like to see a controlled test of FB ad ROI vs traditional ad ROI.
However, paying to “boost a post” on Facebook is much better. So much so that I’ve dropped nearly all other advertising. Running an ad can only target so well, as it’s mostly based on plain old demographics. But boosted posts also take into account those who have liked your business page, responded to your prior posts, and who their friends are. At least, that’s the impression my results have been given me.
While hard numbers and analysis would be nice to see of course, I have little interest in seeing hard numbers in this case. My proof is that I was able to slash my ad budget by over half, and yet still more than double my business. Over a year later with mostly just Facebook, business is still growing.
I’m sure the nature of my business is rather well suited to Facebook though. I’m a sole proprietor offering group entertainment services on a local scale. Im sure the ch companies and other less localized businesses may not get as good results.
I am sure some still get amazing results, especially through retargetting on a good budget. However small targeted campaigns don't have the same effect anymore as they had before in my and some friends experiences.