Users not happy with new Facebook changes

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News Feeds were popping with not-so-gentle complaints Wednesday as many of the social-networking behemoth's 750 million users began seeing the overhaul.
"This is absolutely the worst of the many wrong-headed 'improvements' you have made, and that's quite a feat," a user named Franklin Habit wrote on the site's official Facebook page. "I think Facebook's usefulness to me has now been outstripped by its lack of ease in use."
Others were more succinct.
"This sucks," wrote user Brandon Howell. "That is all."
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Users not happy with Netflix changes. Users not happy with Facebook changes. Users not happy with OSX Changes. Users not happy with the color of the sky and clean underwear.

As an IS Director (one of the top 10 most unappreciated jobs in one recent online study) my life is dealing with unhappy users. One has to get to the point to accept that not every change is going to make everyone happy. It's simply impossible. Better, quicker, faster and exactly the same all conflict with each other.

You hate Facebook? No problem go to Google+, or MySpace, or build it yourself. If Facebook has no users then their value drops. Simply voting with your feet fixes it.

And I continue to run the Amiga at home... So there!
 
When people get familiar with something, they tend to want to keep things the same so they don't need to go through the learning curve again. Perhaps what needs to be done is make it impossible for people to get familiar with something in the first place. Change the interface constantly!!!
 
IIRC, you two don't use Facebook? The changes are a joke. Facebook now decides what you will see in your news feed. They took away the "most recent" button and took away or hid other features. Seems a lot like malicious changes as odd as that sounds.
 
I do use Facebook. I'm not overy enthusiastic and it's not the horrid pile that some make the changes out to be. I'll go with Glaucus. Perhaps the best mode of operation for such as site is constant change. Afterall one of the things Web Developers will tell you is to keep things fresh you want to change things frequently. And now look at all the free publicity they're getting as every Mainstream Media outlet will be talking about them this week. Someone once said any press is good press.
 
redrumloa said:
IIRC, you two don't use Facebook? The changes are a joke. Facebook now decides what you will see in your news feed. They took away the "most recent" button and took away or hid other features. Seems a lot like malicious changes as odd as that sounds.
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I do use Facebook, but use it so infrequently I've never noticed any of their changes! Which means, I use it so infrequently that 1) I've never learned how to use it fully and 2) I've always been annoyed by it. This new change will probably annoy me as much as any other time, so I probably wouldn't have noticed if we weren't talking about it here. And I still haven't bothered to check it out so no comment on any of the changes.
 
people always complain about FB when it changes Anything

it's no big deal
 
faethor said:
Rapid change is the mantra of the web... Get used to it.
http://arstechnica.com/business/new...e-cycleand-how-it-departments-can-tame-it.ars
(Sorry tough love day!)
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I don't think that the consumer is demanding the change - it's just that they lack the weight of a corporation to hold back releases and retard the pace.

Fact is that a lot of the changes are only changes - not improvements, and a lot of the "improvements" are not improvements for users but for customers, i.e. the people that want to buy what the online app is creating, which is usually information about you and your behaviour. Since you are just the worker in this relationship, the employee who is paid by the former usefulness of the online app but are now a slave trapped by your investment - you get no say. Can you leave a site to migrate to another site at the drop of a hat if there is no migration tool that will drag all of your content with it? Are you even allowed to carry your content away - because many sites make you agree to surrender or at least unconditionally and irrevocably share rights to your content.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
I don't think that the consumer is demanding the change - it's just that they lack the weight of a corporation to hold back releases and retard the pace.

Fact is that a lot of the changes are only changes - not improvements, and a lot of the "improvements" are not improvements for users but for customers, i.e. the people that want to buy what the online app is creating, which is usually information about you and your behaviour. Since you are just the worker in this relationship, the employee who is paid by the former usefulness of the online app but are now a slave trapped by your investment - you get no say. Can you leave a site to migrate to another site at the drop of a hat if there is no migration tool that will drag all of your content with it? Are you even allowed to carry your content away - because many sites make you agree to surrender or at least unconditionally and irrevocably share rights to your content.
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What he said.

Facebook can be stupid if they want, people will simply flock to Google+ or Myspace (LOL!).
 
You mean Facebook just hires developers to do nothing other then just move things around? Damn, where do I get a job like that?
 
There's this little coffee shop here in town called Bar Italia. There's really nothing spectacular about it, but it's always busy. One unique thing about this place is that no matter what, they always make big drastic changes to the place. They used to be mostly pool tables. Many of their customers would go there to play pool. Then they decided for no reason to get rid of the pool tables and bring in DJs. Then they decided to get rid of the DJs and bring in just one pool table + lots of couches. Without fail, no matter what they did, no matter how many "loyal" customers they pissed off and swore off the place, they were always more packed then ever immediately after the renos. The other places on the street do the same thing, but they let the business go bankrupt before they decide to change things up. Intentional but unnecessary changes are what kept Bar Italia fresh.
 
Glaucus said:
Intentional but unnecessary changes are what kept Bar Italia fresh.
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more likely they make great coffee and people just put up with the superficial changes because the coffee is worth it
 
No, they've definitely lost a lot of loyal customers. They started off years ago, before I ever went, as a place for the old-schoolers to play cards in the back room. It's changed quite a bit since then.
 
IE7 -- egads we're there too. IE10 will be out soon. Google Apps are planning to can IE7 which means all those XP desktops can forget about using Google. Amazingly IE10 is coming out fairly fast for Microsoft, within a year of IE9. Though slow as Firefox and Chrome appear to have a new version every couple of months.
 
XP can run IE8 easily, but did you mean Google is canning IE8 as well? Not that I care as I use Firefox/Chrome.
 
Glaucus said:
No, they've definitely lost a lot of loyal customers. They started off years ago, before I ever went, as a place for the old-schoolers to play cards in the back room. It's changed quite a bit since then.
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And this is OK when you have a large pool of potential customers to draw from and you can toss away old customers.
It is a small loss for the customers who haven't been there long but it can be a big cost for customers who have been long time customers and who have built relationships with other long time customers.
It becomes an even bigger cost to the customer if he has moved his furniture in, or built a business around the pool table.
So long as there are always more people who don't visit your cafe than do then you have a chance of increasing your customer base more than it shrinks by remodeling.
However, if you are taking in a large percentage of the available customers (say you have a 40% share) then you face serious losses if you piss any regulars off. You have much lower chances of gaining enough new customers to make up the loss.
 
They perhaps lost some customers. Though one might question 'loyal' if they're not around any more. 1/2Billion per day is likely more people than eat at McDonalds so I don't know how much 'loss' is truly impacting them.
 
And this is OK when you have a large pool of potential customers to draw from and you can toss away old customers.
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Perhaps they found that they loose old customers anyway. Perhaps the problem is "old" customers in general who are less likely to stay up late on a weekday drinking beer after beer. They seem to prefer to cater to a younger crowd, which can easily be stolen by a new fresh business down the street. So constant change seems like a great way to keep the young ones coming back.

In my life the one constant I've found is change. Things always change. The people I hung out with daily 10 years ago are not the same people I hang out with today. Same goes for the places. I think attempting to cater to a specific customer base will eventually be your demise. Customers may seem loyal, but they can easily abandon you for that new place down the street - and I've seen that happen many times with the night club scene. That's why so many companies try to force those customer loyalty programs on their customers, but I resist them. Fact is change is more stimulating.

Not sure how good a fit the Bar Italia analogy is to Facebook, but the fact is that as successful as Facebook has seemed to be over the years, they never really understood their own business model until much more recently. There's no question about it that Facebook needed to change, and perhaps they still don't know where they are going. Like I said in a prior post, Facebook is a pioneer of sorts and there's lots out there for them to explore. How boring would it be if they decided to just sit on the cash cow and milk it for what it's worth and become the next Hi5.

However, if you are taking in a large percentage of the available customers (say you have a 40% share) then you face serious losses if you piss any regulars off. You have much lower chances of gaining enough new customers to make up the loss.
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And yet, cell phone companies like Rogers and Telus are still in business. Go figure!
 
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