Comments on: Facebook Is The New AOL

By: Leigh Durst

Leigh Durst — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 03:29:11 +0000

OKAY – as if this didn’t make enough of a point — here’s a post about the upcoming changes in Facebook Pages that may just screw up your life significantly – or not.
http://bit.ly/5S9XEO
People who paid for boxes are gonna be ticked – as well as those who need to adjust FBML pages, I suspect.

By: Leigh durst

Leigh durst — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:25:00 +0000

@steve – I agree – we can’t be all things to all people. I’m a proponent of using personas to focus development and making sure we balance development for audiences with competing or overlapping needs.
Also — there’s a lot of good to be a said for iterative releases and A/B testing too! The problem is, many ot of firms are trying to collectively boil the ocean with iterative development by isolating teams in SILOS. Working in silos (whether it’s by division, task or audience) will almost always screw up customer experience. It’s okay to divide and conquer – but the planning and discipline that SYNCHRONIZE development are often missing.
I’m often accused of perfection. I actually don’t believe in perfection but i am an excellence junkie. My general release rule is that if you can get things positively functional at 80% and really work to improve the 20% you can win. Change that ratio and dialing down the positive ratio is tough thing… because the negative aspects of experience (or one really bad experience against a background of neutral to good) can really taint a customer’s perception of a brand …. It’s kind of like dog poop in a brownie – the BAD just speaks louder than good) You know?
@jeannie thanks so much for the comment and congrats on the book success!

By: Jeanne Bliss

Jeanne Bliss — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 22:26:55 +0000

Leigh, this is brilliant coaching: Why be a necessary evil, when you can be intentionally good? You are spot on. Bravo and thanks for the astute observations and suggestions.

By: Leigh Durst

Leigh Durst — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 19:40:46 +0000

@barbD – Lots of people wish that, Barb. Unfortunately, giving brands the opportunity to post to people’s walls and directly into email boxes is not well received by people in general.
With regard to posting to user walls — it’s also a legally risky thing to do because it is viewed as the equivilant of Home Depot putting up a billboard on your lawn — in a totally unsolicited manner. They had bad luck with Facebook Beacon which resulted in quite a legal brouhaha.
That being said, I get where you are coming from. All things practical and useful for brands & businesses will be practical for PEOPLE. That’s where striking this balance is so important.

By: BarbD

BarbD — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:30:08 +0000

While at it, I really wish Facebook would extend some of the same functionality to Group pages that it allows for Fan pages. Specifically, pushing information to members’ walls, a huge outage that makes Group pages far less useful than they could be.

By: Steve Parker

Steve Parker — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:36:11 +0000

Leigh: brilliant! I’ve had this same thought myself–although I couldn’t drill down like you have. The comparison resonates on multiple levels I think, and both Facebook and AOL in some ways are trying to be the “Sears Roebuck” of the Net. Offering everything to everyone (the Sears of old). Even if done really well, that’s a hard strategy (which is why the saying “jack of all trades master of none”). Or you could also compare them to the CBS, NBC and ABC TV networks in their hayday. Although everyone assumes their massive audience is the root of their power, it’s not. Web power today is rooted in quality, NOT quantity. Until they solve most of the problems you cite, they’ll be only a tiny fraction of their potential. Most businesses don’t need to reach 325,000 people, let alone 325 million. Personally, I think FB is the worst user interface of its type I’ve ever seen.

By: Leigh durst

Leigh durst — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:47:50 +0000

Steve – Thanks. I do think they’ll get there – and hopefully faster by listening to their constituents actively!

By: Steve Woodruff

Steve Woodruff — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:44:42 +0000

Good points here, Leigh – esp about the immaturity of the platform (which wasn’t really designed for business – so everything is now backfill) and the need to create a business strata. I bet they get there – but in the meantime, lots of growing pains!