Currently brands have a choice of defaulting their Facebook wall to display posts from the brand, from users or a mix. These all follow the "most recent first" business logic. The net result is that user posts are often a chaotic mix of mostly irrelevant content with a few gems mixed in. The chaos is so severe that many brands spend loads of effort on moderation or, conversely, don't seem to really care what folks post as they know if will be pushed down quickly by time.
Facebook is testing a new feature that would allow admins to feature more relevant posts higher on the page (for an extended period of time?). This is currently being tested and may be rolled out soon. Here's how Inside Facebook put it:
"Like the news feed’s default Top News filter, Top Posts gives posts with Likes and comments more prominence, allowing a Page’s own community to influence what user content visitors to a Page see first. Posts that aren’t necessarily favorable for the Page but that receive Likes and comments could also be surfaced. Instead of seeing the old “[Page] + Others”, “Just [Page]“, and “Just Others” filters, Pages with access to the tested feature show “Top Posts”, “Most Recent”, and “[Page]“."
The lingering question I have is whether this logic might keep certain posts high on page 1 for days or weeks or if there is a complimentary business logic that would let even popular older posts to sink. It seems that "Top Posts" is one filter and "Most Recent" is another. The gang at Liveworld speculated on a few issues in this post.
In general, this is likely a good thing for brands. It may actually lead to the comments of fans becoming even more influential as they linger on page 1 longer. It may strengthen the sense of community and cause people to participate more as their posts are rewarded by the community with likes and comments beyond what even happens today.
Of course, there is another effect. The ninja warriors NGO's like Greenpeace can more easily hijack and dominate a brand page by driving users to "vote-up" content. Conversely, the brand administrator can change settings to display only brand content, as well.
I think this is a good opportunity, and it will be nice to see how it plays out. However, we know that a great deal of fans visit the page only once - when they actually "like" the page, so I'm not sure how often these comments that linger on the top will be seen. And as any good community manager knows, you don't want the same content living on the main page of a community for too long because it gets stale. I do agree with you, that this may give some fans a bit of influence. Definitely one to watch.
Angela Connor
Author, "18 Rules of Community Engagement."
Posted by: twitter.com/communitygirl | January 26, 2011 at 06:26 AM