A very popular technique is a relaunch. Wrap the product in new packaging and slap the ubiquitous new and improved stamp on it and you can breath new life into almost any old product. Line extensions which introduce new variants of a product such as new sizes or flavors will also stimulate sales and produce growth.
Perhaps the folks on the Z-Team missed that lecture in Marketing 101. Facebook is radically changing its look and feel and the way it functions. A few weeks back the chat function was suddenly totally different. Now the news feed has changed and "friends" are grouped in new ways. The security model has become more complex and we can now subscribe to friends not just pages. This is not your father's Facebook. Break out the user guides, tutorials and cheat sheets.
Earlier this week Facebook notified me they had modified my settings to reduce the amount of email and make the service work better for me, but I could put it back the other way if I wanted to. Gee, thanks, Facebook. Clearly I welcome the opportunity to waste hours finding where these controls now hide so I can try to recall how they were set before and put things back to the way I liked having them.
I can't comment on all the new features because, well, frankly, I haven't spent much time on Facebook lately. I still post to reach my friends but my posts almost always originate from Foursquare, Twitter and Google Plus. Of course when I receive an email alert I will respond, comment or "like" a Facebook post. But unless I can sort out how to turn that back on, I guess I won't be doing as much of that any more.
Watching the rivalry among all the social networks has been interesting. I have already expressed the view that Facebook is going to alienate more people than it will please with these massive changes. I agree with others that people will tolerate these changes because all their friends are presently on Facebook. But the ability to create content and have it flow to and from other networks will erode this advantage and eventually people will head off towards their social network of choice. For some, that may not be Facebook.Captain Joe
Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC
I wonder if social networking has become like a single human being, so complex that there are many truths.
ReplyDeleteI just read this article on mashable:
http://mashable.com/2011/09/21/prepare-for-the-new-facebook/
It says that Facebook's major focus is emotional design: The platform has lost emotional resonance with its users. It's a relationship gone stale. There are other suitors.
"Facebook’s goal is to become the social layer that supports, powers and connects every single piece of the web, no matter who or what it is or where it lives."
So it wants to be the spider on the web, does it? Black widow? Only time will tell.
I can't help but feel we've been here before!
ReplyDeleteEvery time Facebook changes things, there's an uproar from the user base, campaigns to change it back to the "old way", and then people move on to using it just as much, or more....
...rinse, repeat.
Facebook puzzles me - no one cares about it, as a product, and some are openly hostile to it, yet, it still the biggest game in town. Membership keeps rising, and people keep using it. (That's not necessarily a good thing, by the way!)
As far as the New Coke references go - I think the motivations are different. Facebook is constantly changing its product, so this isn't a knee jerk reaction to a competing product (New Coke was a knee jerk reaction to the "Pepsi taste test" and the numbers behind the perception are very interesting).
I'm not sure what Facebook wants to be - that's never been communicated to me. I mean, my friends and I provide all of the content, Facebook is just the vessel. Beyond the connections and status updates, what is it to me?