Facebook Can’t Face the Music Over Redesign
175 Million users is an impressive number for Facebook to tout when those users are happy, but a following that substantial means that even a small segment of mobilized detractors is important to deal with. We’ve seen a string of high-profile blunders on FB’s part this year, from their removal of Burger King’s Whopper Sacrifice application (one of the most entertaining and contentious apps the site’s ever seen) to the recent change (and subsequent change back) to their Terms of Service and, currently, the very vocal fan backlash over the current redesign.
Last night, the ‘Book responded to the redesign criticisms on their blog, confirming that they’re at work on renovating their renovations, and will be making requests more visible and giving users more control over the information that they’re presented in the infamous ’stream’ in the center of the dashboard. This is a drastic change from the company’s “Tough; deal with it,” stance on mixed reviews to previous overhauls. On one hand, it’s great that they’re interacting with their community and trying to accommodate what users want with their vision of what the Facebook platform is. On the other hand, while this is far from a complete capitulation, it further establishes a precedent that the company will roll over for fan petitions and angry polls.
What do YOU think? Is Facebook dealing with this correctly, or are they emboldening the people who are going to complain about the next update?
jeff.stolarcyk
Absolutely, they’re dealing with it the right way. I understand your position, but when the site is free and driven by users, they kind of have an obligation to not have that “Tough; deal with it” mentality. For the site to succeed, people have to enjoy using it. All companies should be listening to their users in order to continue to grow.
After this blog post, a small discussion came around about apps being online, and Chris P had a very good point… If you are a user of paid software (say, office 2003) and you don’t like the 2007 version that comes out, you can choose not to upgrade. If it’s an online app, everyone is forced to make the upgrade at once. If google docs were to change tomorrow, you wouldn’t have a choice about the new interface. This forced upgrade path is something that’s going to become an issue for all online apps, and I think any company that does this type of work is going to have to work with their customers in order to find a happy medium. Smaller changes, and slowly introduced is probably the best path to take on this. Add one new feature at a time, listen to feedback, and tweak it to what the majority wants.