Hey, I'm Jordan Cooper.
Stand-up comic. Web marketer. Tech douchebag.

mark cuban

Mark Cuban Thinks Your Life Is An Insignificant Waste Of Time

Posted on November 20, 2012

That’s the more appropriate title of his post. Apparently, it’s that of a mindless drone who peruses Facebook to escape from a vapid existence, keeping up appearances by liking and commenting on purposeless baby pictures from your friends while having all the time in the world to skim through hundreds of posts in the process.

FB is what it is. Its a time waster. That’s not to say we don’t engage, we do. We click, share and comment because it’s mindless and easy. But for some reason FB doesn’t seem to want to accept that it’s best purpose in life is as a huge time suck platform that we use to keep up with friends, interests and stuff. I think that they are over thinking what their network is all about.

How detached from the real world is Mark Cuban? I’ll be the first one to pan the shallow nature of attention-starved Facebook user behavior, but I can’t be remiss to admit that most people use the platform as a primary communication channel on par, or more so, than the phone, text messages or e-mail. Hell, my parents find out more about what’s going on with my life by keeping up with my posts on Facebook than by speaking on the phone every few weeks. That’s the point.

Who really appreciates that some posts rise to the top of their newsfeed because some folks they used to work with and are still friends with shared a baby picture? Not only do I not like it, I like even less the obligation I feel to like the picture so I don’t seem like some grump.

In a perfect FB world every post enters the friends/like/subscriber’s timeline. If they log in and want to spend the time searching their timeline they see it, if not, not. FB users go on FB looking to kill time. Why not let them?

Sure, there’s plenty of so-called “time wasting” that’s happening on Facebook, yet it’s not an excuse to assume that users have no issue sifting through the garbage businesses throw out there. Cuban’s attitude in his blog post reeks of modern-day aristocratic narcissism as if his, or his brand’s messages, is of noble class importance. In his mind, we’re all just plebs whose everyday activities and relationships are utterly insignificant in nature, to us or to anyone. No matter how boring or non-impactful, one person’s daily life is not a time suck for them.

We should know better than an algorithm what those who like us actually like. It may well be that it’s a passive relationship. Maybe they just want to see the scores at the end of every quarter in a Mavs game? Maybe they want to know what show is playing right now on AXS TV? No one expects them to like, comment or share any of this. It’s just an information source.

You know better, Mark? Obviously you don’t. Your posts would get much more visibility in news feeds if you did. Maybe they want to see this. Maybe they want to see that. Maybe they just don’t want to fucking see you at all. Have you even considered that fact, douchebag? Just because people like a brand doesn’t mean they want to consume information about them religiously on a daily basis to the detriment of their own social graph.

Oh, and just because you can find out about things on Facebook doesn’t make it an information source. It’s like equating Thanksgiving dinner with the family, not as a social gathering of people, but as a personalized resource for curated and aggregated editorial content. Really gives you that warm holiday feeling, huh?

In the context of his general attitude, the nature of Cuban’s incessant babble over Facebook’s news feed algorithm seems laughable since we’re talking about a fucking basketball team here. Not war reports from the Middle East. Not congressional negotiations over the fiscal cliff. Not anything a reasonable person may possibly consider to be a significant impact on their lives or their future.

Don’t you think the people who’d want to see six real-time score updates a night from the Mavericks would actually be watching the game already on television?

Based on Cuban’s own illogical argument in his post, shouldn’t users have the freedom to leisurely pursue the internet as a “time suck” without a filter determining what they do and don’t see? If they really want to know the score of the Mavericks game, they’ll fucking find it themselves. It’s not like that information is scarce nor do people not know how to get it within a click.

Facebook’s news feed algorithm exists solely because of shit like this. Determining relevance on an individual-to-individual basis using thousands of variables is a tall complicated order. Unlike Google who gets an implicit signal of intent with every search query, Facebook doesn’t. What could be extremely relevant to a user one day could mean virtually nothing to them the next, then relevant again a month later.

Mark Cuban expects it to be up to the person to fiddle these nuances for themselves, but who the fuck wants to do that? Not normal people. So Facebook tries to do that on their behalf. They already give users a multitude of settings to help the process, but barely anyone actually uses them. If the masses of people did, Facebook wouldn’t be going so hardcore with algorithmic methods of filtering.

It’s not a revenue grab. It’s a matter of survival. No matter what the vocal minority shouts about privacy concerns, if the billion ordinary people on the platform were to take sides, they’d be rooting for Facebook. For many, it’s the primary place to keep connected with their family and friends en masse and quite often the best source for time wasting. Keeping it that way is much more complicated than a “show all updates” button. I agree with Ryan Tate of Wired here:

It’s odd that Cuban, of all people, doesn’t appreciate the complexity involved in being a “time waster.” His NBA team the Mavericks spends inordinate time and money trying to be a compelling “time suck” for fans with nothing better to do than watch strangers play basketball for hours on end.

The Mavericks hone elaborate on-court strategies, release and acquire highly skilled players, and strike complex broadcast and merchandizing arrangements. They don’t let just any random dribbler onto their home court to entertain the fans. Facebook works the same way.

Keeping Up With “Like-Gate”

Posted on November 15, 2012

In the past week, I’ve told both Mark Cuban and George Takei to take their Facebook Edgerank whining and go shove it up their asses. I can add Marc Canter now to this list of those who operate in a world where assumptions are facts.

Brands and users have been told by Facebook that as they increase their “likes” – and increase their ‘customer’ base, that they will be able to reach these folks – with news, announcements, posts and offers – for FREE! But as Facebook has come under greater pressure to produce revenues – they’ve changed that policy and now ask to get PAID to allow these posts and offers – through the EdgeRank algorithm and actually reach Facebook users.

Emphasis mine. As I’ve ranted profusely before:

Did I miss some grandiose conference tour or massive outreach campaign by Facebook HQ soliciting small business owners onto their platform as a must-have requirement for 21st century success? I surely never got those e-mails. Neither have my clients, prospective clients and the hundreds of other small business owners I’ve ever come across the past few years.

Complain all you want. Get it out of your system. Yes, it sucks for your business that you’ve spent all this time vacuuming up “likes” to have a large percentage be for nought. But claiming a bait-and-switch routine on Facebook’s part? Nonsense. It was you who operated under this false pretense. It was marketers telling you a “like” rivaled that of an explicit opt-in. Not the company itself.

While their direct revenue may come from your brands and businesses, Facebook will end up having a balance sheet of zero if users flee the platform because of all the noise being generated by you folks. You may think people want to see your endless posts of uninspired, useless bullshit, but they don’t. Facebook knows this. If you look at your page insights, you should know this as well.

Should Facebook continue to let you spew crap on our news feeds all hours of the day with no consequence, to the detriment of everyone, for free? Fuck no. Thank god they curb it. They have every right to do so. It’s their platform and you are only the guest on it. These people who “like” a Facebook page are not your users.

For a minute, I thought I was going crazy for being the only one with this opinion. Thankfully, in the past few days, other people have spoken out in even more graceful terms than my aggressive barking. From Ryan Tate at Wired:

In the case of the Mavericks page, it’s hard to get to excited on behalf of billionaire Cuban. Take a look at the page; recent posts are mostly game updates, promotions for local businesses, and promotions for Mavericks specials and games. Even the game updates and player pictures include advertisements, promoting Mavericks sponsors like Pannini America, Albertson’s and BBVA Compass, often placed before the actual content.

In other words, Cuban wants to blast his ads into all his followers’ News Feeds, for free, even when Facebook’s software decides a follower isn’t particularly interested. To him, Facebook is the bad guy standing between him and the Mavericks’ eager fans, who yearn for posts about “sizzling specials” from On The Border Mexican Grill and other sponsors. “The Mavs are considering moving to Tumblr or to new MySpace as primary site,” he has tweeted.

Calling it as he sees it. It’s not like it’s the Red Cross complaining that their important relief effort messages are going unseen by the masses on Facebook. No offense, but it’s just a fucking basketball team. Do over a million people really want multiple posts a day highlighting every time a player grabs their crotch in between sponsorship & partner advertisements? If he thinks so, Mark Cuban is really out of touch with what the public actually wants as Mathew Ingram of GigaOM echoes:

It’s one thing to excuse Takei for not realizing the implications of this, but Cuban is a notoriously sharp businessman who routinely criticizes entrepreneurs on his TV show for failing to understand how markets work. Facebook is a business, not a charity or a platform for social well-being, and it provides that platform free of charge, on the understanding that users agree to be marketed to in a variety of ways.

The idea that it should somehow allow Cuban to spam all his followers with marketing content for nothing is nonsensical.

Emphasis mine. Just as Google rewards relevant quality websites with top rankings in search results, Facebook is essentially doing the same with social news feeds. On that track, just as Google will allow businesses to purchase placement in a sponsored section for any keywords irregardless (somewhat) of quality and relevance, Facebook is essentially doing the same with Promoted Posts and Sponsored Stories. Be relevant or pay the price for not being so. As Dalton Caldwell elegantly puts it:

Facebook newsfeed is an embodiment of our war on noise. We depend on the newsfeed optimizer to protect our limited attention span, and as a consequence, Facebook gets to choose what stories we do and don’t see, just as Google chooses which search results we do and don’t see.

Conceptually, this seems very lucrative: Facebook is auctioning off our limited attention span to the highest bidder, as long as the bidder has a candidate newsstory to promote. Welcome to the attention economy.

Indeed it is the attention economy. Stop your bitching and get used to it, folks.

Mark Cuban Can Suck My Dick

Posted on November 13, 2012

Facebook Is Driving Away Brands

Tech billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban says he is fed up with Facebook and will take his business elsewhere. He’s sick of getting hit with huge fees to send messages to his team’s fans and followers.

“We are moving far more aggressively into Twitter and reducing any and all emphasis on Facebook,” Cuban says, via email. “We won’t abandon Facebook, we will still use it, but our priority is to add followers that our brands can reach on non-Facebook platforms first.”

Good riddance, Mark. I’ll add your name to the list of brands, businesses and celebrities who have this unfounded entitled attitude that those users who “like” your page are yours to do with as you please. They’re not, asshole.

“I think this is a reflection of Facebook searching for more revenue since going public and the more it costs to reach followers on Facebook the lower the value to the brand of being on Facebook.”

Sure, Facebook would definitely love the additional revenue but they have a much more important thing to worry about: user-to-noise ratio. No amount of money in the world will matter to Facebook if people start fleeing their platform en masse (like Myspace) when their feeds become so bogged down with promotional crap.

Seriously, it’s bad enough as it is now. Mark, you want to make it worse?

Come to the realization that the basketball team isn’t at the center of Mavericks fans’ universe. Sure, 2.3+ million of them “liked” your page, but do you really think each and every one of these people want to see seven fucking posts a day about the team? They don’t.

“I realize that Facebook has never given 100% user coverage to followers of a brand. However it now appears that to extend beyond minimal reach is going to cost brands more money.”

And we’re all glad, for the sake of everything holy, that it will. I know people who have “liked” hundreds upon hundreds of pages. Shit, I’ve liked 94 of them myself. Does that inherently mean that I’ve given my explicit permission for these pages to have unfettered access to my news feed at their whim, no matter how trivial, non-targeted or irrelevant it is to me at the given time? Hell no.

If you want to interrupt Facebook’s users (which is what they are, not yours) with self-serving bullshit only for the best interests of your brand, pony the fuck up.

“Brands have invested in getting consumers to like their Facebook page with the presumption that every like is created equal, that the brand can reach the user easily. That is not the case.”

The definition of ‘presumption’ – an idea that is taken to be true, and often used as the basis for other ideas, although it is not known for certain.

Just as I’ve ranted about before, you can’t blame Facebook for reneging on a value proposition it never actually stated in the first place. Can someone please find me one instance where Zuckerberg & Co. ever claimed that building your “likes” equaled a platform of easy, no-barrier access and 100% reach for your brand or business? I’m still waiting.

“I think the disconnect is that not everyone realized that they didnt allow 100% reach. I bet if you asked anyone who has subscribers if their posts reached 100% of their subscribers, they would say yes unless they have seen the dollar box for promoted posts show up.”

Great. The “ask anyone” argument. I’d expect more from an accomplished businessman than fifth-grade logic as empirical evidence of a fact. It’s the same fallacy that duped the Romney campaign. Just because you’re talking to a bunch of ignorant executives – those who wouldn’t know the difference between Edgerank and Edge Shave Gel – that are under the same delusion, doesn’t make it true.

Who the fuck invests millions of dollars in an advertising or marketing campaign without knowing how it even works for sure? Apparently, Mark Cuban does…

“And let me add, I’m not trying to come off as some Facebook expert. I’m not. I have a bunch of little companies via SharkTank and other investments that use Facebook in the normal course of business. They shouldn’t have go to great lengths to figure out the nuances of Facebook audience reach. That complexity, IMHO, will come back to haunt Facebook.”

Really, it’s that complex? Post shit that people give a fuck about. That’s it.

If you do that on a regular basis, expect the reach to be high. If not, then it’s time to pay the piper for that privilege of annoying us. You don’t need a social media guru to understand this. You just need a seventh-grade education – which apparently Mark Cuban doesn’t have.