Dear Facebook,

First of all, I’m not sure if I should thank you or complain to you.
Four years ago I was a brand new mum, not sure what her career was going to look like, I moved to a new country and it was difficult to settle.
I had this hobby ‘making cake toppers with sugar paste’ it was just a hobby but I loved doing it so why not publish my creations on Facebook.
My Facebook page had 300 likes (mostly friends and family).
Things took a turn when I posted my first Tutorial of three penguins playing in the snow. I believe the foundation of Facebook is sharing, because if no one would share anything there would be no Facebook.

Creating Content is not always business

I call myself a content creator. I create and share content for people to enjoy, I have build my page and followers from scratch based on sharing.
I felt encouraged because of Facebook, the support from people I received felt amazing and motivated me to create more content. At the same time I was making Facebook a more interesting place within my own little circle.

My page grew rapidly and I never had to pay for boosts to get seen. People were visiting my page just because they loved to.
After image sharing came video sharing and I saw my personal development because of all the features Facebook offered me, this was great. I was on a mission again and Facebook helped me to achieve these goals.
Going from 300 followers to more than 100.000 in less than 1,5 year felt like one of my biggest achievements, I didn’t earn any money at this time but I really felt I had some kind of purpose again and found online a community to be part of. I even made amazing friends in real life.
All thanks to Facebook. I started a business, it was time to get a bit more serious and my ambitions were getting bigger.

So long and thanks for all the fish

But the last 1,5 year things have been going down hill for us as content creators, we started to see the ‘boost this post to reach more people’ message under posts and little by little Facebook took away all that we worked really hard for. All that we did to make Facebook an interesting place to come back to, all my followers might not mean anything to you Facebook, except perhaps a way to moneytize them but they meant the world to me!

Out of 362.000 likes on my page my last posts only reached about 3.000 to 7.000 people and it weren’t posts to sell anything. It weren’t posts to make any money. It was creative content that I’m sure my followers would have loved to see but you are not letting me anymore Facebook.

So after all we have been through together I do feel you’re being harsh on me now. You helped me grow and I have done my best to make my Facebook page an interesting place.

But now I think it’s time to move on! Back to basics, by just sharing my creative content on my own blog and website.

Thank you for helping me grow Facebook, for making me the creative person I am today. However I’m sad we can’t really continue like we did, I feel our relationship is getting a bit one sided and you’re forgetting that the content creators have been a really big part of your success.

So if you are still reading this, don’t forget to check my blog regularly for new updates and tutorials!

Etty