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Facebook's Quick About Face
I'll give CEO Mark Zuckerberg a B- for his response to the situation. Read on to see how I think he could improve his grade.
I've been out of the loop due to traveling (my godson received his wings as a Naval aviator on Friday -- a great day!). So I'm just catching up on all that happened.
Here are the components of the grade:
Initial response: C.
Mr. Zuckerberg's 9/5 blog post acknowledges that "many of you aren't immediate fans of the new features" but first highlights that some consider the new features "overwhelming and cluttered". Hmmm. I didn't see any protest groups popping up about the clutter. He goes on to defend the features and invites feedback, but the general tone is defensive and doesn't reassure readers that Facebook will incorporate the feedback into the product.
Ultimate Response: A
"Coding nonstop for two days" to bring out features to correct the deficiencies was exactly the right thing to do. Mr. Zuckerberg's 9/8 post hits exactly the right tone: Admitting where Facebook messed up and that the company missed key principles that they believed in is the kind of honesty that always disarms critics.
Speed of Response: A
Getting the initial response up on 9/5 as the protests grew was exactly right. Fixing it within 3 days was even better.
Learning the bigger lesson: B-
That lesson is: involve your customers in your development process. Mr. Zuckerberg took one good step in inviting members to a group called the "Free Flow of Information on the Internet" to talk to him and other Facebook executives. Basically this is the right thing to do but 1) the name sounds more like a lobbying group than a customer feedback group. Also, it sounds like he will be pushing his view of what Free Flow means. 2) He gives no indication that this is more than a one time event meant to address one specific problem.
Remedial action
To raise future grades, Facebook needs a permanent way to gather member feedback, an internal process that proactively seeks it, assesses it , then incorporates it into development. Study QuickBooks community section, especially Better Because of You to see how Intuit solicits and uses their customer suggestions. For extra credit, get tutoring from a company like Communispace that specializes in building and managing customer communities.
Posted by Jim Nail on September 12, 2006 at 09:09 AM | Email this post
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No doubt this is just beginning - Companies are starting to learn from social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace and co-opting consumer web technologies for office use. You'll soon start to see a dramatic increase in social communities of interest rising within companies and industries - expanding their rolodex, their influence and giving their voice access to a powerful growing audience - breaking down barriers and creating movement outside of traditional hierarchical networking. Ideas and people have power and the influence of social networking movements is just beginning to be realized.
Hopefully Zuckerberg and Facebook's non-collaborative and initial defensive response to last weeks rebellion has taught us a few valuable lessons - you can't control the genie when you've let it out of the bottle, we have to find better ways of communicating to the growing social network and better understand its influence on markets, politics and even global affairs.
Although perhaps disconcerting that it took something as seemingly slight as altering a website, a new feature to Facebook's social networking site, to rally the college youth of today. But there is no discounting how astonishingly effective an organizing tool social networking sites can be.
Half a million students in less than three days! As some reporters have cited, "Even if it's just a bunch of mouse clicks, collective action on that scale can never be ignored." Perhaps the Facebook Generation has only begun to sense the influential power they have - and we'll see similar types of protests, rally cries and a new voice coming from Generation Y.
We'll indeed keep and eye out on this story and see when they raise their voice again.
Posted by: Robert Collins | Sep 13, 2006 9:46:42 AM
This is just beginning - Companies are starting to learn from social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace and co-opting consumer web technologies for office use. You'll soon start to see a dramatic increase in social communities of interest rising within companies and industries - expanding their rolodex, their influence and giving their voice access to a powerful growing audience - breaking down barriers and creating movement outside of traditional hierarchical networking. Ideas and people have power and the influence of social networking movements is just beginning to be realized.
Hopefully Zuckerberg and Facebook's non-collaborative and initial defensive response to last weeks rebellion has taught us a few valuable lessons - you can't control the genie when you've let it out of the bottle, we have to find better ways of communicating to the growing social network and better understand its influence on markets, politics and even global affairs.
Although perhaps disconcerting that it took something as seemingly slight as altering a website, a new feature to Facebook's social networking site, to rally the college youth of today. But there is no discounting how astonishingly effective an organizing tool social networking sites can be.
Half a million students in less than three days! As some reporters have cited, "Even if it's just a bunch of mouse clicks, collective action on that scale can never be ignored." Perhaps the Facebook Generation has only begun to sense the influential power they have - and we'll see similar types of protests, rally cries and a new voice coming from Generation Y.
We'll indeed keep and eye out on this story and see when they raise their voice again.
Posted by: Robert Collins | Sep 13, 2006 10:34:20 AM
