I can't help but raise one eyebrow more and more at Facebook every time they release another ill thought out capability or re-design. The code that enables all Facebook functions is extraordinary. However, there are a few major factors that work against it, such as size, privacy, customer service and constant new design layouts that users are forced to learn and use. The missteps and mistakes seem to be getting worse.
One memorable video that talks about the potential Facebook demise was by Mark Suster here (It starts at 30:29 - see the thumbnails). If you've read those hyperlinked posts above (size, privacy, and customer service), or any article mentioning these issues for that matter, then we're on the same page. There's a volunteer driven site that has been created so that Facebook users can double check their privacy settings using an external app, presumably because finding this sort of access to your own privacy settings is difficult within your FB account. Mark Zuckerberg, despite his company's meteoric rise to a multi-billion dollar valuation, has continued to push this "we're still experimenting" excuse for the user privacy controversy. Pretty soon, Facebook users will realize there comes a time where the experimentation era is long past, and that user privacy is important enough to push back. The interviewers in this video had to ask Mark Zuckerberg several times about privacy, "Why are you taking pre-emptive steps that make me go and check and make sure I have the control I want?" None of the answers Zuckerberg provided were satisfactory. To Facebook's credit, over the past year, they have adjusted the privacy layers to be a bit more accessible and for users to have more control over their data. However, they still push these behind the scenes re-design initiatives and overstep privacy boundaries with no warning and little regard to their users.
Was the Facebook Profiles Redesign Successful?
You may remember that on December 5th, 2010, Mark Zuckerberg announced the new profiles design. This set off a flurry of activity in the blogosphere and from major news outlets. Wired was among the first to report, pointing out that if you adopted the new profile design early, you would not be able to revert back to the old design if it turned out you did not like the new interface. Facebook was intent on rolling out the new design for all users by early 2011. It seemed like no one liked it at first. I tweeted a Facebook blog post from my @SocioCentral account, observing that if you look at the comments at the bottom of the Facebook Engineer's blog post, you would see that "About 8/10 didn't like it and wanted customization." The question from an analysis standpoint should be: Did Facebook re-design profiles for users, or did Facebook re-design profiles to further monetize user-data?
Two days after the freshly announced profiles initiative, Aliza Sherman with Gigaom rightly pointed out that Facebook is wrong to forcibly mix professional and personal aspects of their users. I agree because the brand and image of an online community needs to be a container and/or broadcaster of one aspect of our lives. Aliza concludes with what Facebook designers and engineers should take to heart: "It's disconcerting when our social networks make assumptions about what we want to reveal or showcase". Just like the comments at the bottom of the Facebook Engineer's blog post, self-promoting their new profiles initiative, it seems fairly obvious that their profiles redesign failed because the ultimate judges (users) did not like it. At the same time, Facebook is still growing because users seem to forget about the assumptions that Facebook makes, we (including me) get used to constantly re-designed layouts and keep on using the platform because most of our friends are on there.
We're Just Experimenting
I am not one to curse companies out, but I will say that if Facebook continues to push the "we're just experimenting" excuse in the face of their users' privacy, and if Facebook rolled out the re-designed profiles for money now or in the future, and not for their users, the Facebook philosophy has changed for the worse. Once the founding philosophy of a company goes 180 degrees, their fortunes have also gone 180°. Facebook might very well be at their peak valuation. To back up my perspective with one more source, I came across this compelling case by Douglas Rushkoff, writing an OpEd for CNN, basically arguing that decisions taken during the current IPO/financial disclosure era is a sign that the Facebook founders are cashing out.
One potent argument that I have not read anywhere yet is how Facebook turning users' likes into ads, then presenting them to friends as though they were original, could very well alienate the general FB populace. A strange feeling came over me when I saw a friend in my newsfeed "posting" an exact quoted match to two different friends. This was obviously during the BETA phase of the new like-ads, where engineers had to learn some last minute glitches from trial and error. Do you remember the scene in the movie Social Network where Zuckerberg talks to Parker about leaving ads out of the platform at first? This is the point of the Facebook life-cycle where they need to show revenue potential for the $75 billion valuation. I can foresee when users will eventually feel like they are swimming in ads if they sign into Facebook. If their newsfeeds are filled with ads disguised as their friends' comments and likes, they will sniff them out and eventually get turned off.
Read the Comments
One habbit that helps me gain more insight is to look in the comments of any blog post or news article. I know this sounds obvious, but most don't do it, depending on the site. Sometimes there is more insight in the comments than in the original post. Shashank pointed out in this FastGush blog entry, that Facebook has "stripped the fun out of commenting". Facebook recently announced that they are providing a commenting plugin, so that users can comment on other websites and webpages which will link back to their FB account. It looks like most users feel that the new Facebook commenting plugin is not user friendly, the content is hard to read, it is "half-baked" and there are privacy concerns, again.
TechCrunch used to use Diqus which was a more dynamic and refined commenting system. Unfortunately, TechCrunch has adopted the new Facebook commenting system, along with others such as the Financial Post. A commenter in that same TechCrunch post, said "Think of it this way -- market feedback is a good thing. You *want* to release your product before you implement every conceivable feature, so that the market can tell you which additional capabilities they'll value, and which ones they won't." (Al Sargent). But Mr. Sargent misses the point! Facebook made a big mistake on this one. They put out a limited functioning plugin, touting it as a finished product. Yes, you "want" to release an unfinished product - if you're a startup company. You do not want to release a half completed web-product if you are a large established network with hundreds of millions of users, while third party companies pine to incorporate the half-finished plugin into their websites for a bit of notoriety. Sure, Facebook could get away with releasing an 80% complete web-product, but this one seems more like 20% complete. The end result is third party websites like TechCrunch and the Financial Post adopting an incomplete product as their sole commenting system, which has only served to annoy many loyal users.
In the TechCrunch comments section of the announcement, a Product Manager with Facebook actually stepped in to explain some of the features, but he was drowned out by various complaints, peppered with unrelated feedback.
--Conclusion is after the image--
Conclusion
Yes, Facebook has over 600 million users, and it will take quite a while for that number to decrease, but when they start changing the interface, pushing privacy settings under the surface, when they consistently and inaccurately presume user-needs, when they start changing their founding philosophy (disguised ads), and when they release an unfinished product allowing other websites to adopt it, in my mind the forgivable missteps by Facebook are looking more and more like stumbling.