Listen to Customers or Innovate? — Lessons from Facebook Redesign
On March 11th this year, Facebook went for a redesign. The new design drew a lot of flak across the web. A Facebook polling application on the new site layout had 800,000 votes in 1 week, of which a resounding 95% gave it a Thumbs Down (link). We had users thrashing the new design with comments like “I hate it and if it doesn’t change I will only check it once in awhile.”
So what should have been the result? A fall in traffic for Facebook; or a mass exodus (or reduction in usage) of these disappointed and angry users. But what we are seeing instead is continuous and explosive growth in traffic and user-base of Facebook. In fact since March 2009, Facebook user-base has only grown (check the graph below). Facebook blog suggests that its registered user-base has grown from 200 million in April 2009 to 250 million in July 2009!
Facebook Unique Visitors Traffic
And for all the theories of “listening to customers” and the like, Facebook founder Mark Zukerberg actually sent out a mail to his employees reacting to this criticism for the new design implying “companies are stupid for listening to their customers”and “the most disruptive companies don’t listen to their customers” (link).
Does this signify pure arrogance and complete apathy towards customer feedback on part of Facebook? Facebook is a social networking product and a conversation among its members is the key offering. How can then Facebook risk disapproval of the very channel and way in which these conversations are taking place and getting shared on its network?
Or on the flip side, does this hint at how well Zukerberg knows his customers. Zukerberg knows why his users come to the site, and also at the same time perfectly understands why they would stay with Facebook. There is always a resistance to any change (whether good or bad), and when it is change to something as routine as Facebook has become for millions across the world, it was bound to create some noise.
Never has customer come up and told an innovator what innovation he needs. Back then in March, Facebook had just made an unsuccessful attempt to acquire Twitter for $500 million. This new design was an attempt to make the user-generated content more sharable. The wall posting on profile page had given way to “What’s on your mind?” status messages. Sharing external link or multi-media became easier. ‘Highlights’ on right hand column allowed popular and sticky content in your network become more prominent.
Public memory, in India and everywhere, is short. The huge uproar against the new design died out silently, and now everyone seems to have adjusted to it and is at peace with it. Facebook knows that it has crossed way back the critical mass barrier every social network faces. Its members have created huge networks on Facebook and viral effect of this network is bringing more and more members to the network. Content (user-generated) is sticky, and gets updated on regular basis. So unless you utterly mess with the design, users will be happy with what they have.
What is your take on this?
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- Facebook Using Diwali to Promote User-Tagging in Status Updates
About the author - Vibhushan is an entrepreneur and a keen observer of Indian internet industry.
Change is good if you know what you are doing. – Lesson from facebook
Keep it simple. – Lesson from Google
Rediff has changed its site’s mainpage keeping it simple. Is it good/bad, I don’t know? I like the rediff redesign but no longer visit now…don’t know why?.Earlier I used to visit daily.. funny comments at rediff
What’s your take on rediff?
Rediff redesign was reviewed previously at http://www.pluggd.in/rediff-redesign-review-and-site-traffic-numbers-297/
Nice article!
The catch is to know what is really going to work. Yes, your users may crib, ‘cos everyone resists change (people read “who moved my cheese”, but then don’t know to implement it in life).
The irony is, it could have swung any way. If it had swung the other, then there would have been millions of fingers pointed saying “I told you so”.
I am so glad it didn’t!
It’s possible that half or so of those million users are not visiting the site often. They would still visit the site according to poll.
I think Facebook made the right call not because they didn’t listen to users but because they knew how to filter user feedback.
I’ve heard that Steve Jobs doesn’t believe in focus group style testing for products and that’s why apple innovate on UI. It might be untrue.
Some thoughts.
1. Users usually use the feedback option when they want to complain. So an uproar caused due to redesign may not represent view of entire community. Usability principle (bitter truth): its more important to see what users do instead of what they say. You are right when you say people hate changes in their routine. A good litmus test would be to introduce the old design one year down the line for the people who complained
2. The increase in traffic may be because of various reasons. The redesign might have introduced new configurations, apps, screens.
3. A ‘new look facebook’ is more likely to create general buzz for the product as compared to say a twitter buyout. Meaning, more people will talk about it in offices, on lunch and more new people will get introduced to it, that might be the reason of more registrations, and not necessarily the redesign itself.
4. In the same time period, they also introduced the concept of facebook usernames and easy profile URLs. Given the value of premium keywords on facebook, you can’t deny possibility of username hoarding and similar activities.
Steve Jobs has a philosophy of always thinking ahead of the customers. If you just give what the customers want, you would never be able to innovate new products.
There would be no macintosh, no iPhone, even no iPod, no iTunes store if Apple had just listened to customers