Facebook "stream" redesign: Disruptive companies don't listen to their customers

http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2009/03/21/FacebookStreamRedesignDisruptiveCompaniesDontListenToTheirCustomersMarkZuckerburg.aspx

by toffer • 17 years ago

15 22 17 years ago

25hoursaday.com

devicenull• 17 years ago

Every time facebook makes a change, everyone whines about it for a month then actually likes it. Why would this change be any different?

It would seem people are just perpetually afraid of any sort of change at all

cos7• 17 years ago

You're making a mistake in not looking at the substance of what people have said and are saying, and collapsing several very different episodes into "every time facebook makes a change". Reactions to Facebook changes, and results, have actually been quite different.

The first big outcry was about the introduction of newsfeeds. People were upset because Facebook sprang it on them by surprise, and suddenly information was being shared in new ways that people weren't used to, hadn't expected, and had no control over. In the long run, newsfeeds turned out to be one of Facebook's most useful and visionary features, but they did make two mistakes: 1. Surprising people, causing them to realize after the fact that they'd shared information in ways they hadn't intended 2. Providing no control. Facebook's success owes a lot to the way it offers people very granular control over their privacy and sharing.

Facebook fixed #2 by adding granular privacy controls for newsfeeds, and #1 just naturally fixed itself once people figured out the new system.

A couple of later episodes of "everyone whines" were different: Facebook made a big mistake, everyone complained, and Facebook backed down completely, thus quieting the criticism:

1. "Beacon", which let partners' web sites post to people's feeds (for example, you buy a book at Amazon and it appears on your feed). Facebook pulled Beacon. They later began reintroducing some of the more useful aspects of Beacon in limited ways, with better user control, and this has been useful.

2. The change to Terms of Service a few months ago. Huge outcry, Facebook admitted their error, backed out the changes, and started work on a new terms of service to fix problems in public view with public comment.

Another case, and probably the one you're thinking of, was last year's profile redesign. That time, Facebook did things right: They informed people early, and opened a group where they posted weekly mock-ups of what they were thinking and asked for comments in a managed way, and responded to the previous week's comments. The process went for several months, and I followed it and could see how it improved the design significantly.

When the new design came out, some people did indeed object vocally. But a lot of other people (me included) saw the value of it because we'd been included during the design process, and because the new design really did have a lot of advantages, which we could articulate. This outcry took a different path than previous ones: Facebook did not have to make any changes, and instead, proponents of the new design eventually converted most of the opponents.

When Pages were overhauled recently in the same way as the Profile redesign from last year, there was no major outcry.

And now we come to this new Facebook redesign: It really is AWFUL. They threw away all that they learned last time. They took out most of the advantages of last year's redesign, eliminated many of the most useful features, and actually went back even further, effectively eliminating the newsfeed. They did not include users in the redesign process, and they did not give previews or warning.

Your analysis is much too simplistic, and misses almost everything significant about the differences between these episodes of Facebook changes followed by objections from users, and therefore misses all of the factors that make each episode different from some of the others.

phoxix2• 17 years ago

Thank you for nailing it.

While its true that Facebook users always bitch and moan about changes. This time they're bitchin' and moanin' annnddd using a very key word: confusing.

I fail to see why A) Web developers need to put down their users constantly, instead of working with them. B) Why web developers think that Twitter can do no wrong.

The elitist holier-than-thou web developer herd mentality is mind-boggling.

vaksel• 17 years ago

actually they do...they just don't listen to the 1% that bitches and moans.

SingAlong• 17 years ago

Totally agree with your point. The new design is actually a lot better. In the older design, I had to wade thru a lot of visual crap before I got to stuff like news feed or my own wall. but the new design has made it easier.

cos7• 17 years ago

Are you really comparing the new design with what was the case a month ago? You sound like you're comparing the previous design with the older 2006-2008 design.

mustpax• 17 years ago

Well, any change invites considerable resistance. So I'd even say they have to ignore more than 1%.

Most of us tech savvy people don't realize this, but a lot of people (if not most) use software through memorization. They memorize their path to the most common tasks that they use it for, and stick to those. Call it the 80-20 of use cases. A really good UI allows people to learn these new tasks relatively easily, but that is not to say this is not cumbersome for most people regardless. Any change requires users to pause and invest time in discovery before they can actually do what they want to do.

So, any change is annoying in itself for these users; and that is completely regardless of the merits of the change. User adoption after users are (not to sound too fascist) forced to accept changes is the real measure of the legitimacy of these changes, not the initial reaction.

As software engineers and designers we have to have a much longer term understanding of feature growth and functionality, if it was up to users it would always be more of the same which gets too complicated way too quickly. You add one more button of that much desired functionality and pretty soon you're left with remote controllers with a hundred buttons.

ChrisMac• 17 years ago

I'm not a huge Facebook user, but I don't get what the big deal with the change is. They just made the news feed a little more prominent. The older design from a few weeks ago emphasized that already.

Whenever I logged on, that was the main thing I checked anyways - updates about what my friends were up to.

If anything, I think it's good. It'll give me more opportunity to keep in touch with people in little ways hear and there.

cos7• 17 years ago

They've done a lot more than that. Most significantly:

1. There is no more news feed, they've eliminated it! What you now see on the homepage is basically a "status update feed". While they've enhanced status updates so that they now combine the former share/post functionality, every other kind of action that used to go in the news feed is no longer there. This has a lot of corrolaries. For example:

2. Apps can no longer be viral. When you take an action in an app that causes it to post to your profile wall, that action will not appear on your friends' homepages, so they won't see it unless they go looking for it.

... the same is true for other things: For example, when someone tags a photo of one of your friends, you'll no longer see that on your homepage. You'll only be notified of the new photos if the person who posted the photos is your friend.

There are a lot of other bad changes and features removed, but that's probably the biggest problem.

grag• 17 years ago

#2 is not true. Stories posted automatically via the API won't show up in friend's newsfeeds. But apps can popup a "feed form" which allows users to preview the content the app wants to post to their wall (this can include an image or embedded swf). If the users posts it then that content will show up in all their friend's newsfeeds. I think this format is actually much better for apps.

unalone• 17 years ago

There is no more news feed, they've eliminated it! What you now see on the homepage is basically a "status update feed". While they've enhanced status updates so that they now combine the former share/post functionality, every other kind of action that used to go in the news feed is no longer there.

That's not true at all. Apps still publish to the feed. That's how I found out about this Facebook poll: it published an update to my feed.

Furthermore, the Highlights on the side is the exact same as the old feed. You get app updates there as well.

Again not true. I get tagged photo updates on my main feed.

I understand the Facebook change dislike, because people hate big changes, but people are just blindly making things up now.

rfunduk• 17 years ago

Two words: Vocal Minority

This happens every time Facebook (or any other major site for that matter) makes a change. A few months from now everyone will forget about it and get on with their lives. At least until they change it again, when everyone flips out and wants the 'old' layout back (eg, the one they're complaining about today).

cos7• 17 years ago

Your analysis is much too simplistic, and lumps a number of very different episodes of Facebook change into one common pattern when in fact they differed significantly, and what happened after was different.

See my comment in reply to devicenull for more detail.

chiffonade2• 17 years ago

The real question is: who has nothing else better going on in their life that they must complain about a FB redesign?

cos7• 17 years ago

... or that they must comment about a discussion of it on a hacker news posting of a blog post discussing it? Yup, that's the real question, I'm sure.

chiffonade2• 17 years ago

I'm talking about the users who deem it a major event in their lives that their social portal changed layouts, not the entrepreneurial hackers discussing how this has implications for future profits for their own projects.

Think more meta, man.

ealar• 17 years ago

I like the facebook redesign. I think it's snappy and I can still easily get to all the information I need when looking up contact info. Further, the AJAX loads pages considerably faster, and in many cases incrementally (e.g. pictures), radically decreasing the effective "response time" of the site.

I really have to wonder why we're even talking about it in a controversial way instead of an analysis of the technological changes and their effect on the site. It seems this is the wrong site for a controversial facebook design argument.

zandorg• 17 years ago

I just saw a video of Zuckerberg on Google Video (NYC Facebook developers meeting in Dec 2007).

He predicted accurately where they'd be by now in terms of numbers.

But I got this impression: He listens to his (outside) developers.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8966315003179793637...

Facebook "stream" redesign: Disruptive companies don't listen to their customers

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