Fan growth declines post brands switching to ‘Facebook Timeline’: Study

Washington -  About six weeks after the first brands began switching their Facebook Pages over to Timeline, growth has shown slight decline, a new study has revealed.

According to a study done by Wildfire Interactive, a social media marketing firm about 67 brands that adopted Timeline, reportedly showed a lowering of fan following, Mashable reports.

The results of the study also revealed that the comments were down 6.5 percent per post and fan growth “slowed slightly” for all brands on an average, but brands with more than 1 million  fans experienced twice the sluggishness of smaller brands.

In case of bigger brands with 1 million-plus fans, even as likes per post jumped to 10.9 percent and People Talking About This (PTAT) was up 11.9 percent, but comments per post fell to 7.4  percent.

However, the company did not delineate the extent of the slowing.

Wildfire CEO Victoria Ransom believed that comments are down with the Timeline redesign because “it’s much more difficult to see users’ comments, both on a brand’s wall and in the  newsfeed.”

“Comments from other fans don’t show up in brands’ posts on users’ newsfeeds and because Timeline is now so visual with so much real estate taken up by pictures and videos, comments  are quickly collapsed. This encourages likes and shares more than comments,” she pointed out.

Facebook was unavailable for comment.