As I write this, over 90% of some 1.2 million survey respondents want the old Facebook back.
Or do they? In my experience, customers and clients are rarely able to tell you clearly what they want, because they aren’t really sure themselves. Give them exactly what they ask for, and they often hate it. Robert Scoble nailed this point in his Porsche analogy (read the whole article, he discusses some of the same stuff there):
My former boss, Jim Fawcette, used to say that if you asked a group of Porsche owners what they wanted they’d tell you things like “smoother ride, more trunk space, more leg room, etc.” He’d then say “well, they just designed a Volvo.”
I hate ads as much as the next red-blooded netizen, but it’s important to remember that these guys have a right to run their business and try to make money. If they put in so much advertising and other ridiculous bullcrap that it becomes unusable (hello, MySpace!), people will stop using Facebook and move on to something else (hello, Twitter!). As it stands, they’re raking in the dough because they provide such a useful product that everyone wants to use it.
Could the ads be more clearly separated from the non-advertising content? Definitely. Could there be fewer of them? Probably. But here’s the bottom line: are you using the site less than you were? I’m using it much, much more since the redesign. This is because I’m using it in much more interesting ways - commenting on stuff and interacting with my friends rather than just traditional Facebook stalking. The new commenting, liking, and linking features add depth to the Facebook-friend relationship that was sorely lacking. Indeed, my impression is that many of the people who are complaining most stridently about the change are also taking thorough advantage of these features and getting more out of the site as a result of the change they supposedly hate.
People dislike change, particularly when it’s change to something that they’re as emotionally invested in as (for some unfathomable reason) this. Give it some time, and people will be just as nostalgic for this iteration of Facebook after the next update forces them to adjust again.
Tagged: advertising, customers, facebook, friends, myspace, Science and Technology, twitter
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3 Comments
I think there is a very real limit on what you can get from user feedback. You shouldn’t ignore your users, but you shouldn’t let them design your product either.
The key is to find out from your users what problems they want solved, and then solve them yourself. Don’t listen to your users’ solutions, they are probably pretty bad. Instead listen to their problems and then build your products to match them.
I think facebook was right to listen to their users during the whole TOS fiasco a couple of weeks ago (that was about privacy and content control, not design and features), but I hope they have the balls to ignore them now.
Absolutely. One thing that interests me is the content (or lack thereof) of the complaints voiced on the message board for that poll. Most of them just say, “I hate it!” and “Change it back!” and “Sucks!!!!1″ without making any substantive complaint. This, to me, points to discomfort with change rather than a real problem with the site’s design.
And honestly, I don’t understand why people would want to change it back. I disliked the previous iteration of Facebook and wanted them to go back to the layout they had before that because I thought their changes made the pages look messier and harder to navigate. This new update is an upgrade of the annoying layout they changed from. I do think, though, that at some point Facebook is going to have to stop coming out with new designs every six months.