The above image is just the latest posting prompt I’ve received when I log into Facebook. Others have included not only friendship “celebrations” but also current events like the Olympics, meteor showers and more. It’s obvious Facebook wants us to post more and is giving us specific topics to talk about. The social network is basically Linda Richman, giving us all a topic to talk about.
Facebook loves to tout stats in its blog posts about new features or changes. I’d be incredibly interested to see if there’s any actual numbers that show this is moving the needle and actually resulting in more engagement and post volume. Facebook has, in the last year, been the subject of studies showing overall post numbers are down and if I had to guess I’d say these prompts started appearing about the time Facebook was denying those reports.
So I’m curious, do you take advantage of these prompts? I’m all for nudges to get me writing, but since I don’t use Facebook like Facebook wants me to use Facebook these don’t work particularly well for me. They’re interesting as mile markers and from a “Oh, so that’s what they’re doing” observational point of view. But that’s about it.
Chris Thilk 