When I opened Facebook yesterday a message from Facebook appeared at the top of the feed. It was meant to highlight Facebook's search capabilities and used a recipe search as a teaser.
Oh Facebook I thought, you must know I don't like you as much as I like Twitter and Pinterest, you must know I love cooking and are trying to win my affection.
I collected cookbooks until my shelves were full and I watch Food Network. I also occasionally post to two blogs -- one is about screenwriting/storytelling and I've posted a few recipes on the second, a lifestyle blog. The lifestyle blog has more than 7,000 views though I haven't updated it in quite awhile.
The search option on Pinterest is pretty fantastic and some of my favorite boards are food-related. I wondered how Facebook would compare, so I took the bait. I searched for soup.
Recipes friends had posted showed up followed by soup recipes posted by brands. Among the posts were a few of the now-overdone video clips showing a recipe being made in a few seconds. NOTE: We didn't like Martha posting recipes in an extended series of Twitter posts and we're getting tired of having analytics show "views" on Facebook after just three seconds posts of food being made as we scroll past.
Not blown away but still curious, I searched for pie. I used only the word "pie" because I wanted to see what a broad search would return.
First were posts about pie that friends had posted, photos of pie they'd taken after baking and slices of pie they had ordered in restaurants. Next the search returned content posted by magazines and food companies for both sweet and savory pies. There were also more of the annoying how-to videos. I took a couple of screenshots of recipes and saved one or two posts.
I stopped scrolling when I saw a picture of a stunning banana cream pie. I haven't found a recipe for banana cream pie that I like so I looked a little closer. The photo was perfection, luscious cream pie/banana whipped cream yumminess on a golden crust. Maybe I'd make a pie Sunday night and take it to work Monday.
The account was verified. I noted the words "stoner pie," and thought, this pie looks good, stoners must make great comfort food.
The photo was so lovely that I liked the post. Just as the "thumbs up" icon turned blue I noticed the description, "...a recipe for a delicious cannabis-infused banana cream pie."
Coworkers, bosses, admin, friends are on Facebook ALL the time. I quickly "unliked" the post, hoping it hadn't registered.
How will Facebook analytics measure that interaction? It's a great example of how analytics can be dangerous.
I have friends who plan seminars. They value and carefully study every comment and create reports containing responses, ranked on a scale of 1 to 10, that attendees submit.
Recently, a friend walked into one of the seminars and immediately left when the content was not as advertised. Others also didn't stay.
My friend later said all reviews for the seminar were very good; however the surveys were given after the presentation and only captured opinions of the people who stayed to the end.
Hearts, thumbs-up, pausing or even showing up, not scrolling quickly are carefully counted and are included in analytics reports.
Maybe someday the reports will become more powerful and assign emojis such as the horrified yellow face that's half blue, or the shocked face with wide-open eyes or even the angry face to capture the reality of some of these encounters.
It will be fun to watch and see.
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