DIGITAL MEDIA INSIDER: Facebook Organic Reach - Brands 'Swarm' To Foursquare - Twitter Acquires Namo

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FACEBOOK ADDRESSES DECLINING ORGANIC REACH: Declining organic reach on Facebook has become a growing issue for brands that use the social network. Many brands have seen their organic reach - non-paid content that appears in News Feeds and in search results - fall off sharply in recent months. Brian Boland, Facebook's vice president of ad product marketing, addressed the issue in a recent blog post.

Boland highlighted two key reasons why organic reach is declining: First, the continued growth of content created and shared on Facebook is increasing competition for space in the News Feed. Facebook populates a user's News Feed from a selection of an average of 1,500 stories that could potentially show up each time a user goes to the Feed. The number of potential News Feed stories can top 15,000 for highly active Facebook users. Second, Facebook has made changes to how it selects News Feed stories over the last year. The social network believes these changes will increase exposure for high-quality content while cutting down on News Feed spam.

Boland denies that Facebook has made these changes in order to drive brands towards the social network's paid advertising products. "If people are more active and engaged with stories that appear in News Feed, they are also more likely to be active and engaged with content from businesses," Boland wrote.

There is evidence to support Boland's claim. Post engagement, which counts the total number of comments, shares, and likes on brand posts increased through the fourth quarter of 2013, while post impressions, or the number of times a post was viewed, declined (see chart below).

BRANDS 'SWARM' TO FOURSQUARE'S NEW APP: A number of brands, including Pepsi, Procter & Gamble, and Volvo, are experimenting with Foursquare's new app Swarm, AdAge is reporting. The "place-based ads" appear after a Swarm user checks into a new location. Foursquare launched Swarm, which includes check-in and friend finding features, shortly after announcing plans to decouple it's check-in and location discovery services. Foursquare will refocus its primary app on location search and discovery. The company currently offers three main ad products, including place-based ads, location promotions, and location-targeting.

TWITTER ACQUIRES NAMO MEDIA TO BEEF UP MOBILE ADS: Namo Media, a company that specializes in native advertising on mobile, announced that it has been scooped up by Twitter. The company will be added to Twitter's recently-acquired MoPub platform. This acquisition comes after a string of recent moves by the social network to bolster its mobile ad product. Twitter wrote in a blog post that it has been working to better incorporate native ads into its mobile products, "in order to create a more seamless and less intrusive ad experience for users." Namo, in its own blog post, says it will continue doing what it has been doing, but just under the MoPub name and platform.

FACEBOOK LAUNCHES SNAPCHAT COMPETITOR - TAKES IT DOWN: Facebook accidentally launched Slingshot, a Snapchat-style photo and video messaging app, on Apple's iOS App Store and then promptly took it down. The app allows users to send annotated messages, but unlike Snapchat, Slingshot messages can only be opened after the recipient sends a message back to the original sender. Facebook did not say when the app will officially launch.

SECRET FOR BUSINESSES: Anonymous sharing app Secret is beta testing a new feature called Dens that lets users share secrets only within a certain network. This feature lets users "share anything you're thinking - kept within the walls of your workplace," according to the company's blog post. Secret says it will release it on a network-by-network basis, targeting businesses and potentially universities. Messages posted within a given network would be unable to spread to users outside of the group. The news caused some to question the effect Dens could have on some closed networks where gossip runs rampant, like schools. Or even businesses where there is internal rancor. Secret co-founder David Byttow took to Twitter to assure that it would not be released to high schools.

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