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    Digital Publisher LittleThings Shuts Down, Citing Facebook News Feed Change

    Company said potential buyers were scared off after traffic plunged 75%

    LittleThings announced on Tuesday that it's closing after nearly four years due to a change to Facebook's news feed that caused traffic to plummet.
    LittleThings announced on Tuesday that it's closing after nearly four years due to a change to Facebook's news feed that caused traffic to plummet. Photo: LITTLETHINGS
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    LittleThings, the female-focused digital publisher that specialized in distributing its “feel good” content on Facebook , FB -1.88% is shutting down after a change to the social-media company’s news feed caused its traffic to tumble.

    In doing so, the company becomes the latest publisher to feel the effects of a decision announced by Facebook in January to prioritize posts published by users’ friends and family members and de-emphasize those posted by news organizations and publishers.

    LittleThings Chief Executive Joe Spieser announced the shutdown in a memo to his staff on Tuesday. In it, he called Facebook’s news feed tweak “catastrophic,” saying it caused organic traffic to plummet by 75%.

    “No previous algorithm update ever came close to this level of decimation,” Mr. Spieser wrote. “The position it put us in was beyond dire.”

    In November, The Wall Street Journal reported that LittleThings had hired a bank to explore a variety of options, including a sale. After the algorithm change caused LittleThings’ traffic to plummet, Mr. Spieser wrote, the potential buyers lost interest. That left the company in jeopardy of violating its bank debt covenants, leading to the closure and its 100 employees losing their jobs, Mr. Spieser said.

    News of LittleThings’ shutdown was earlier reported by Digiday.

    The news caps an almost four-year run for LittleThings, which was hatched in 2014 from a content marketing page for the online pet food retailer PetFlow. A Facebook page originally created to promote PetFlow had attracted over 800,000 likes by June 2014 and a related blog was seen by 20 million unique users every month, according to comScore. So, PetFlow spun it off into a stand-alone media property.

    LittleThings, which published uplifting stories primarily aimed at women, was among the publishers that amassed its audience primarily using Facebook, making it particularly vulnerable to the social media giant’s tweaks over the years. The company had also taken advantage of Facebook’s emphasis on video, producing original videos that offered inspiration or instructed its audience on practical matters, such as cooking.

    LittleThings President Gretchen Tibbits said in an interview that LittleThings isn’t the only digital publisher to be adversely affected by Facebook’s news feed change.

    “Do I think that this is a pivotal time for media and that there will continue to be changes in the digital world?” Ms. Tibbits said. “I definitely think so.”