A Letter to Facebook

I wrote a letter to Facebook that they will never read. But maybe you will.
I may have been a little frustrated at the time.

“I’m sure many have voiced disapproval of the way that “pages” have been set up, now. Namely for musicians or artists. I’ve all but given up on using Facebook to promote my art because without being willing to fork over $10, $20, even $50 per day to “advertise” my posts that should ALREADY be going to my followers, I, instead, have around 45% seeing status updates and FREAKING 5% seeing links to my art. 5%, Facebook.

It’s already statistically proven that only around 5-15% of “fans” will pay for my (or anyone else’s) artwork. If you’re marginalizing my reach as an artist to 5% of my audience, you’re basically telling me, “Screw you, unless you spend money on Facebook, you’re not going to make any sales because you won’t make any connections.”

Because of that, I’m sure you have many young artists- the same ones who scour the web buying “likes” and “friends” for their art, spending hundreds of dollars on being able to advertise to the people that ALREADY FOLLOW THEM. So you may think that you have this in the bag. And maybe you do, for now. But as an artist that knows what’s up, I wanted to take the time to write and warn you that your glory days of pickpocketing young, impressionable artists who don’t know any better are numbered. Because those of us who know better will leave you behind for services and platforms created around US, not around making a quick buck.

We will leave you and go to Twitter, and to Bandcamp, and even to the new MySpace if we want. We will go to places we design and build as an alternative to your garbage, because you’re charging us our hard earned cash to do things we should already be allowed to do: connect with our followers. Not 5% of them. Not even 45% of them. 100% of them.

When that migration happens, it will only be a matter of time before the every day users migrate to where the action is, and Facebook will be over. I can’t say I’ll be sad. The ideals that made this place great when it started- exclusivity, minimalism, an ad free environment… Those things are all gone. And what’s replaced it is FarmVille requests, spam messages, incessant ad space, and money sucking “promotion” to people who just want to make connections with their fans.

So screw you.”