Clever Facebook, very clever indeed. I applaud your revenue-driving efforts. Before I go into detail, let me explain in the most simplistic terms possible what Edgerank is.
If you do not take some sort of action from a page that you have "liked," its activity will stop showing up in your news feed. You see, people "like" practically everything these days and Facebook had to come up with a way to show in your news feed what you're really, genuinely interested in. This also applies with people,. Ever notice the same people or pages showing up in your news feed consistently? That is because you are looking at their pictures, leaving them comments, "liking" their updates and having some sort of consistent interaction with them.
You know your buddy Bob who you knew in the 11th grade, who now lives in Arizona, who you haven't talked to in 20 years is your Facebook friend but have you really reconnected with him or do you even care about what's going on with his life? It's always fun to connect with really old friends to see what they have been up to, but after the novelty of it fades you realize why you haven't really kept in touch with them after all. However, you keep them as friends on Facebook. Since you really have nothing in common with these people, you really don't like or care for anything they have going on in their lives, and they are least the important persons to display in your newsfeed. Edgerank.
Why it's a clever revenue boost for Facebook?
Often times fans are gamed into 'liking" a page. Remember that chance you had to win a $1,000 by liking that diaper company? Of course you liked the page, who wouldn't want to win a cool G? Needless to say you didn't win but you're still a fan of that page. Problem is, after that contest was over the brand did very little to give you engaging useful content so you just ignored it and pretty soon it just went away. That is Facebook Edgerank.
Many brands have done a poor job of messaging their fans and getting them to engage. The consequence in providing poor content is that your messages are now bumped from your fans' newsfeeds since you did nothing to encourage them to "like", share or comment.
Now what do you do to get back those fans you have lost? Buy Facebook advertising to give those fans something to re-engage in.
Is making a company have to buy advertising to get their fans re-engaged clever or just wrong?