Facebook Follies
I’ve been watching with much interest into the recent changes that have happened at Facebook. The gist of it is that they added some new functionality to the site that changes the way user profile information is shared and more importantly how changes are shared.
I ran across some great posts by Fred Stutzman about the whole debacle. Fred has some great comments in there and good insight to why such a screw up is really such a screw up.
Lesson #1 in community building/management: community feedback is critical to the success of your product. The Facebook community does not like these new features. Guess what? They can (and will) vote with their feet here and either a) not use Facebook b) use Facebook less or c) go somewhere else. I find it ironic that Facebook overlooked the key component that has made them successful; their community. Facebook, MySpace, even Digg and Slashdot are sites that are meant to cater to the needs of their communities. If you don’t meet those needs, users leave. If you piss them off, they revolt. This is a pretty simple formula.
Facebook replied effectively saying “Relax, Breathe” … and what? Get over it? That’s nuts. The first thing I would have done? Pulled the features. Yep, that’s right. I would have reverted immediately. Actually waiting a little bit longer to pull the features might be good for them. They might actually achieve the New Coke formula fiasco that actually resulted in a major win for Coca Cola. Make a big splash today about removing the features and your users will thank you. Not only that, they will be that much more loyal.
What would have been a better way to go about this? With large social networks like this you can’t introduce features like this with the flip of a switch. Was there any testing done? Any feedback from users? In fact, did the users even ask for it? If I were Facebook I would launch, you guessed it, labs.facebook.com where they could vet new features and engage the users so there aren’t any surprises. There will always be people who don’t like change or new functionality. However, if you can sway the early adoptors and thought leaders, that impact will be much less.
Update: It looks like the folks at Facebook have listened to their users. Great news.