How has Facebook changed and what is the alternative?



Contributing Writer
Photo: Computer Danger Credit: Gabriella Fabbri


Facebook sucks.

If you want to get some traffic in the blogosphere or in digital media write a variation on that thesis.  Everybody is a little down on Facebook these days.  Consumer polls love to identify faults with Facebook:  Users prefer Google Plus over Facebook, one-third of users find Facebook useless and boring, Facebook is less trusted than your grocery store, and so on.  The top article on Social Media Today for the last few days has been, “Facebook is Dying.”  Tell people how dire things are on Facebook and they will agree with you wholeheartedly….

But just to play Devil’s Advocate let me ask a question:

What changed?

Sure, I know Facebook changed everyone’s email to “@facebook” and they run some ads that look like your friends posted them.  They have changed some of their advertising practices, but how much have these things affected the user experience of people who don’t read CNet and Mashable to inform their social media experience?  My guess is not much.

In fact, the last discernible wholesale change that Facebook rolled out may have been Timeline.  Despite the change from the previous layout, I wonder if Timeline is something so over-the-top horrible that people haven’t come to accept it and navigate within that context?  A majority of people hated it at the outset, but doesn’t everybody (sort of) hate change?

With all of the talking heads and blogging hands talking about consumer dissatisfaction with Facebook, I question what the tipping point was that made the Facebook experience so horrible?  I have a guess….

Has Facebook’s IPO become a harbinger for customer sentiment?

Yesterday, Facebook’s stock dipped below $20 a share after Facebook shared disappointing (and by that I mean better than expected) revenue with Wall Street.  There was call for Zuckerberg’s resignation as CEO, all kinds of strange calculations showing why their stock is tanking, everybody knows something they didn’t the day before.  Am I being overly simplistic to look at the situation as a bunch of speculative investors that were hoping to cash in on an increase in stock price and started selling at pain-points exacerbating the problem with its perceived value?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

A few pieces I’ve read have made the giant leap between the stock dip and consumer sentiment, and I fail to see the causation.  Facebook offered the same user experience on May 17th as it did on May 18th.  It offers a more robust complement of apps and functions than it has ever offered, yet talk of their “death spiral” started a few hours after they went public.  Comscore and Neilsen’s post-IPO studies have shown a disconnect between people’s sentiment about Facebook and user behavior – so it’s hard not to think that the tail is wagging the dog in this instance.

If Mark Zuckerberg resigns tomorrow, Sheryl Sandberg takes over and the stock gets an initial bump – would user sentiment get a bump as well?  I’m inclined to think it would.  And if that’s true, then it seems that user sentiment is irrationally tied to its stock price.  This makes their stock performance an even bigger deal that just dollars and cents – their relevance may depend upon it.

What’s the alternative?

There’s a bright side for Facebook: there’s nothing to replace it with.  In all of the hyperbole about Facebook I find it somewhat humorous that no one evaluates this. Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest, Path, {your social network here} are all ill-equipped to perform the complement of functions that Facebook performs.  Its purpose may be to keep people connected, it may be to keep people entertained, but in any case there isn’t a clear heir apparent to Facebook: a huge problem if its prognosis is terminal.

The good news is if they cure the disease, they may get rid of the symptoms as well.

Photo Credit

Jim Dougherty

Jim Dougherty

Writer and chief of miscellany at leaderswest.com

I aspire to give people something to think about rather than tell them what to do. My favorite Google Alert is “social media research,” I am increasingly compelled by Gen Z, and I appreciate good writers agnostic of where they write. At one time I was Kred’s 12th most influential social media blogger and Klout’s most influential person on the topic of David Hasselhoff. Transplant from Seattle living in Cincinnati. Haven’t entirely adopted the local sports teams yet.

Jim Dougherty

@jimdougherty

Jim Dougherty

Jim Dougherty

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    We get college students to join FreezeCrowd.com every day.  They will soon be all on my site.

  • jimdougherty

    Delete.

  • jimdougherty

    Hey Eric, sorry about that – I tried to send a comment from my mobile and dorked it up (I just migrated to Disqus and am working through the kinks)!  I apologize for sounding so abrupt!  Thanks for your comment and for reading!

  • BDP1061

    It’s one thing to make changes that users don’t warm up to right away but the changes are difficult to use. You don’t get to see what you could once see so easily in the beginning. I want to see my friends statuses one simple choice they took away and If I use the lists they need to work!

  • http://www.biznetworkguy.com/ John Davy

    Interesting piece. Google + is looking better by the day..!

  • http://leaderswest.com Jim Dougherty

    Thanks for reading and commenting John! I wish Google would make an effort to give Facebook a run for their money – but I think they may have a more intermediate goal in Twitter, especially if Twitter continues to cut off API access!

  • jimdougherty

    Great insight – Facebook is not the most user friendly site by any stretch of the imagination!  Thanks for reading and commenting!

  • jimdougherty

    Thanks so much for reading and commenting, John.  I’m not ready to go there, yet – but there are a lot of things that I appreciate about how Google has developed G+ that give it some advantages over Facebook.  But user experience is still lacking to make it a true alternative.  Cheers!

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