Techmeme finally posts stories to its Facebook page
You may not know this, but Techmeme's had a Facebook page since 2007. And it has garnered many “likes”, including Mark Zuckerberg's. (You may have heard of him!) Unfortunately, and perversely, Techmeme never actually posted anything to this page during all those years.
Context & Ripple Effects
Techmeme has been an outlier among tech publishers: its Facebook page existed since 2007, accumulated many likes — including one from Mark Zuckerberg, whose own habit of joining rival platforms dates back to his public Twitter account — yet the aggregator never posted a single story to it. The page was essentially a parked asset.
The activation lands days after Facebook's December 2 News Feed changes, which surface more articles that get mobile clicks and fewer memes. For a headline aggregator whose entire product is clickable links, that algorithmic shift makes Facebook a far more attractive distribution surface than it was during the page's six idle years.
First-order effects
- Techmeme headlines now reach Facebook users directly through a page that had been dead weight since 2007, timed to an algorithm that newly rewards exactly what Techmeme publishes: article links people click on mobile.
Second-order effects
- Other tech news aggregators and publishers now compete with Techmeme for the same newly favored article-click inventory in the News Feed, raising the stakes of maintaining active Facebook pages.
Third-order effects
- If even a deliberately off-social curator activates a Facebook presence when the algorithm tilts toward its format, editorial outlets' distribution decisions are effectively set by Facebook's ranking changes rather than by their own preferences.
The trend: Facebook's News Feed tuning is becoming the de facto switch that turns publishers' dormant social pages into active distribution channels.