Wednesday, September 17, 2008

The New Facebook = Less Users


So last night I was out to dinner with some of my close girlfriends. We got on the topic of Facebook because I use it to set up the invites. I asked the girls who knew about the event via Facebook? They said oh I just knew because of the email you sent out. And then they went on to say how they don't use the Facebook anymore because its hard to use and hard to find anything. One girl said that after the change over she can't even get into Facebook. Another friend said "I can honestly say i probably wont use facebook ever again."

Hmmmm... So what does this tell us? Facebook is losing users due to their switch over. Not only are they losing users, they are not listening. I know that a majority of people that I have talked to really don't like the new look and feel. When I asked them if they submitted feedback they said yes. Well then why isn't Facebook listening?

Either Facebook is not reading what users have to say or they just think that they new look and feel is so perfect they went ahead and rolled it out anyways.
People are so upset with the new look that groups and applications have been created to ask for the old Facebook back. One group that stands out the most to me is the
, 5,000,000 people who want the option "Back to the old Facebook" to remain! group. This group currently has over 700,000 members and close to 5,000 wall posts. So how can one say that Facebook is listening to their users? Some applications have been created to revert to the old look FB but now they don't work, which leads me to believe Facebook de-activated them. Awesome way to control your users! I thought FB was about what we like, not what you want us to like.

Instead of writing a whole post that complains and complains about how people hate the new Facebook here is what I think FB should have done to keep their users happy:
  • Ask Facebookers what they want changed (maybe they did maybe they didn't I honestly don't know but who ever told them this was a good idea has no idea what a real Networking site looks like)
  • Make some design changes that are easy to use
  • Don't hide stuff, I hate that I have to go through tabs to find when my next trip is coming up.
  • Do not redesign the entire site, no one can find what they are looking for.
  • Listen to feedback from Facebookers, if they don't like it don't switch it over.
  • Understand that a Facelift is a good thing some times not an entire makeover. (pretty much the same thing as point 3 but it sounds cooler)
In conclusion, I feel that as a user of Facebook it extremly dissapointing that our voices are not heard. Especially when you are like me and have submitted feedback on a regular basis. So my hats off to you Facebook for turning away your users, great job!

2 comments:

Sergey said...

i dont think it matters.
facebook will not have trouble with users, those who dont like it will leave, new ones will come.
according to alexa, facebook is 5th most visited site. according to compete it grew 7.6% in a month and 57.0% in a year.

just my 2 cents.

Anonymous said...

You have to consider though; 700,000 members out of 100,000,000 active users amounts to less than 1% of people complaining.

Chances are, although there are some people who don't like the new Facebook, the majority of users either had positive or no feedback.