It seems that there is an uprising against the new Facebook design. The Facebook user and developer community, the blogosphere, and even employees hate it, at least if you believe Valleywag. There is even a Facebook application designed by a third party that lets users vote on how they feel. Of course, users must install this application to vote and there is likely a selection bias in that people who are angry often are willing exert more energy to express their point of view.
When Facebook launched the original News Feed and Mini-Feed there was a furor over the features. This time is different, many people argue. The News Feed was great while this change is so clearly wrong, right? Perhaps. But, other than having the benefit of hindsight on the older features, how do you know? In 2006 Facebook had a fraction of its now 175MM user base — any major UI or functionality change will trigger a massive quantity [in absolute terms] of change antibodies even if the relative number of unhappy users reamins constant. Such is the double-edged sword of usage growth.
Facebook has access to usage data that most, if not all, critics lack. Are a larger percentage of users now providing updates on “what’s on your mind?” Has the number of updates increased in frequency for those using the feature? Have click-through rates on the News Feed increased or decreased? Has usage of the site gone up or down? Has the torrid rate of new user acquisition slowed? Has the rate of change of the density of friends within the current user base gone up?
How can critics be so certain that the design is a bad thing for Facebook without empirical evidence? Critics may be right, but they may be wrong, just as they clearly were with the News Feed and Mini-Feed.
The irony of all of this is that I discovered this furor through the Facebook News Feed itself, thanks to the new design. The old design offered me about 10 feeds per 24 hour period. I now have a stream of news from my network which delivers a much richer flavor of what’s going on in my network right now, including displeasure with the new design.
Perhaps the naysayers are right, but they may be wrong. Usage data [and time] will tell the real story, but Facebook has an information assymmetry in its favor on this question. I applaud Mark Zuckerberg for having the courage only a founder has to do what he believes is right in the face of all of this criticism. Hopefully his courage is supported by the data. If it is, he would be well served to highlight some of the favorable changes to temper his critics.
5 responses so far ↓
kent // March 20, 2009 at 9:54 pm |
Failure or not, I do think it’s a bit incomplete. For example, the new feed really stresses the importance of grouping your friends. However, you need to navigate away from the Newsfeed page in order to adjust your groups. The design also emphasizes the most frequent Facebook updaters at the expense of those who update less.
As many have said, the design is very similar to that of Twitter. But the use case for Facebook used to be very different than Twitter. We’ll see if that changes too.
Michael F. Martin // March 20, 2009 at 10:46 pm |
I agree with your point here.
The point that you don’t make, but that I find even more interesting, however, is that the impetus for change in this case was external.
Jesse Farmer // March 20, 2009 at 11:14 pm |
The data will be what has the final say, but I have a hard time believing this decision was made with that in mind. It seems very unilateral.
Why didn’t they roll it out on a select subset of users, for example, before launching it entirely?
It might wind up being a good decision — the data will tell, as you say — but I don’t think it was a well-made decision.
Chris Lunt // March 20, 2009 at 11:36 pm |
This decision has changed my mind about Zuckerberg, in that I now think he may be visionary. It takes a lot of guts to make this decision (and in the same postion, I don’t think I would have had the guts to do it), and I think in time everyone will see why this change was necessary to keep Facebook relevant.
Now he has to have the fortitude to see this through. If this turns into the Beacon and TOS debacles all over again, I rescind my newly found respect for Mr. Zuckerberg.
Sumit Khetarpal // March 21, 2009 at 2:34 am |
Mike,
I think its a very interesting move.
By shifting some of the engaging content on the rightmost column, Mark is training eyeballs to start looking there, and that will make the Ads go up in value.
Of course, the catch is the whole thing blowing up on usability side. But, I don’t think so.