Facebook Changes in 2018
Have you heard about the Facebook scandal?
If you’ve been keeping up with the news, you might have heard mention of the scandal with Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. Basically, Cambridge Analytica received data for millions of people without consent from a third party app developer. This data was shared prior to 2014 when Facebook started to restrict data access for third parties. However, with the publicity around the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook has started to make changes to further protect its users data.
What does that mean for me?
If you’ve planned on any Facebook marketing, this will affect you. How so? Well, on the techy side, Facebook has started to restrict what third party developers can accomplish. This includes Facebook chatbots. ManyChat and other platforms like it no longer allow for new pages to connect to their system because Facebook is pausing review of all new third party connections to Messenger. Chatbots have been said to be a fast track into people’s daily lives, approaching communication with a conversational style where prospects can relate better with brands. Facebook Messenger has started to review connections again. There is no update yet from ManyChat on whether new pages can connect to chatbots.
Another side effect is that Facebook has locked down its Pages API. This means that third party apps such as Hootsuite no longer have the functionality they used to. An update from Hootsuite explains all the changes for both Facebook and Instagram. The changes in Facebook’s API removes some features which are all documented within this article.
For applications that connect to Facebook, Facebook will now require the user to reauthorize permissions every 90 days. This includes Hootsuite permissions. If you have a Facebook login to sites or use one on your own site, you will be required to reauthorize.
Moving forward
There have been many changes to Facebook in 2018 so far, including Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement back in January. The Facebook experience will soon focus less on businesses and more on relationships. Does this mean that businesses should give up on Facebook? With over 2 billion users on Facebook worldwide and the oldest audience of all social media platforms, businesses should still utilize Facebook in their marketing strategies. Staying aware of changes to Facebook algorithms and permissions is just a side effect of how fast the internet changes.
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