While there are a lot of people who are still addicted to Facebook, there are plenty of folks who rarely check in anymore, if at all, and Facebook isn’t happy about that. In fact, according to a new report, they are being relentless in their attempts to get people to log into the site more often.
Bloomberg reports that retaining users is so important to Facebook they will become aggressive if someone stops using it. Some people who have started logging in less report getting frequent texts and emails, sometimes multiple times a day, trying to entice them back on the site. Rishi Gorantala, who deleted his Facebook app and cut back on his usage over privacy concerns, says he gets security prompts from the site “whenever I don’t log in for a few days.”
And it’s not just reminders of what folks are missing out on. The site will send emails suggesting a person may be having trouble logging in, which essentially tries to trick people into going on the site out of fear someone else tried to access their account. And even if folks do use Facebook regularly, the site is trying to get more posts from them. Lately they've been filling news feeds with all sorts of reminder boxes like memories, anniversaries of friendships, and even posts about how many photos they’ve been tagged in, or the number of reactions they’ve gotten, hoping it will spark some engagement with the user.
Of course, Facebook insists their tactics don't have ulterior motives. They note there are “many reasons” why they send notifications to users. As for all those celebration posts, they claim they were rolled out because people said they liked celebrating memories, not because they wanted more engagement from users.
Source: Bloomberg