How I think Facebook is forcing me to spend money

I am an admin of a Facebook page named Injury Time that my friend and I started a long time back (almost 1.5 years ago). When we started out we thought of being full time enthusiasts of it, but work and other personal commitments prevented us from acting on it. The only things that the page had were a profile picture, cover picture and a post that was shared within a week after the page was begun.

Initially the likes were got from our friends and family. Then slowly likes began to come day by day. Sometimes 1, most times 0, on rainy days 5 etc. We thought of acting on the page but again, were too busy to find time. We never cared about deleting the page, just in case we think of revisiting it.

So, the page was present in a limbo of existing yet not existing for over a year. The whole of 2016 saw an increase in likes from 110 to 281. I think it was good considering there was absolutely no activity on the page.

Then came 2017. With the advent of 2017, somehow the trend of likes on our page changed. From an occasional “jump followed by plateau” trend it changed into an ever-increasing trend. This certainly got our attention. Each day we used to get notifications saying “X has liked your page”.

Within a period of 3 months (January to March) we got 200 likes. A stale page with no engagement got so much attention that we thought it might be worth regenerating the page. We joked that the page is like a Phoenix rising from the ashes.

Since April 1, the number of likes we have received on the page is 20, which when compared to the average of past 3 months, is almost 1/3rd less than how much it should have been. And the interesting point to note here is the trend of the likes in April – Since April 10 the number of likes we have received on the page is 0, and no prizes for guessing the current number of likes we are on – 499!!

Not just likes, the page views also reduced drastically (for a page of this size). When it used to be at least 4-5 a day, it came to a binary pattern after the start of April. We even posted twice in the hope of reaching a wider audience and to honour and return some value to the people who had liked our page, even though it was practically dead. All these steps and we are still one short of the magic number!

And what supports my thought is the fact that I got a notification saying that I am almost at 500 likes. Promote your page to reach more people.

I feel the page is like Sachin Tendulkar, when he used to near his century – getting nervous and ticking runs slowly – taking a lot of time to reach 100, but eventually getting there.

PS: If any of you readers feel like being the person that can take us past that magic number, please do so! Find us at Injury Time.