Until facebook makes a profit none of this matters.

You may as well cover the redesign of a website on Angelfire.

The concept of facebook as an address book is pivotal to understanding their strategy. Take Facebook Connect for example. We made it a focus of one of our sites, http://HerHotSpot.com, because it allowed our target demo of Gen Y girls the opportunity to transfer their address book. The actions they take on our site are drastically different than those found on FB or even Twitter – that is the point. Facebook can afford to take chances with their platform because their overarching strategy is based around making money everywhere – eventually I assume that we will be serving up Facebook ads on our site through FB Connect – why wouldn’t we. The point being is that FB can take chances and try new things as long as they focus on the “address book” – and they do a great job with this. From there the strategy is too make money everywhere – not just on the platform.

Great post,

The stream needs advanced but simple filtering.

CPO RJ Garbowicz was asked what is YourNight.com, he responded, “Picture this; you get home from work in the evenings and you turn on your PC, what do you do . . . answer email . . . browse your social networking or dating site . . . play online games . . . search videos and music . . . shop online . . . peruse job listings . . . check out local events . . . search for a business . . . go to your online banking . . . well you get the point, YourNight.com affords you all of this, and much, much more – all within one colossal, user-friendly portal . . . that’s all I can say for now, since we are still in stealth mode . . . however, as soon as we complete our Series A capital raise of $10 million our purpose and presence will be known.”

For more information, please contact:
RJ Garbowicz President/CPO Extreme Enterprises, Inc.
Phone:727.289.5522
Email:RJ@eeihq.com
PO Box 49271
St Petersburg, FL 33743

I don’t know, maybe this is too simplistic… but Facebook users whine whenever ANYTHING changes. They hated the last layout change.. they hate this one.. but yet… they still use the site religiously.

Facebook never made sense even before, so why make a whoopla about it now! Nothing has changed, it’s still the same old MMORPG that we play everyday collecting friends.

Matter of fact facebook should poll users on future designs.

They can show you a preview and stuff why not have a little box asking do you like this check yes or no and you can only participate once or just have an option to switch to back to the old design like the did in the past before making big changes.

I actually think its not at the bottom but its damn far from the top. Why is there a all or nothing complex with the feeds go back to the old way it was.

You cant select which type of news you don’t want to see and stuff you just have see nothing or see all.

At least myspace and most other sites that changed there home pages have a transition time where you could go back and forth between the old and new design why doesn’t facebook

Matter of fact does anyone know the amount of people that when on a profile go pass the default wall box and go to the others info, etc.

Sad.

How long will we wait?

Wonderful article. Although I definitely don’t always agree with Dare’s point of view, his analysis and his breakdown of the facts is quite accurate.

One thing that keeps striking me – and what Dare mentions too – is what fellow Facebookees mean by “if they do this or that, I’m outta here”. Guys, for once and for all: there’s no comparable alternative. I’m pretty sure Zuckerberg won’t leave his sleep for some thousands of members who “leave”. Facebook is – more than ever before – crawling out of our spare time occupations, and becoming an essential part of one’s online social presence, like it or not.

Moreover, I don’t see why Facebook should poll its users when it comes to future design changes. Although they have done this when the new profile pages were underway (somewhere around September if I’m right) most remarks proved what we all know: people don’t want change; in the end we’re all conservatives… Besides, Facebook is offering a free service to us, the end-users. In how far do our remarks count then?

Seriously? That’s just pathetic.

I dont think the word copy makes sense in Silicon Valley

Come on .. its becoming a world of status updates and microblogging

Its just building products what users prefer .

So, it is OK to advertise on TC with comments, like this from RJ Garbowicz guy? Cool! I’ll come up with something as idiotic, but bigger….

@RJ Garbowicz Well done RJ, your post looks like spam but I disagree. It is a legitimate effort to let the world know about your company. Good luck

Anjali Sen

From India

Well said, Anjali….

@Steve Gilmor – you need to trim your post down. There’s absolutely no need to write an article that log to get your point across. Seriously.

Steve,

Can you provide more details on “Track” ? Thanks.

All of the thought, opinions, speculation, commentary, etc on this subject makes the same fatal mistake – It assumes that Twitter will not evolve, that it will somehow be forever what is it today. In addition, people will in all likelihood not “leave” Facebook, only reduce their use of it. In that case they’re left with their registered user numbers intact but a hollowed out audience to market to.

If you make that assumption that Twitter will not innovate then yes, Facebook may have an opportunity. But we all know that’s not going to happen. Twitter will in the relative near term be introducing groups and some version of filtering, and thereafter threaded conversations. How will that change people’s view of the competitive landscape?

We’re far too early in the game to be having this inane conversation about whether Facebook users hate or love the new design. It’s the motivation behind the changes that matter. And if you don’t think Facebook didn’t make some of these changes to emulate Twitter functionality then I want a little bit of what you’re smoking.

“Facebook already had part of the last functionality, so its opening of the micromessaging stream consolidates all three legs of the tripod.”

Just a tangential nitpick- It technically wasn’t a tripod until after it was consolidated, and we still don’t know what remaining pieces may come to define the social networking sphere.

I would have preferred you to have said, “..opening of the micromessaging stream at facebook serves as the third piece of the social triforce, promoting Mark Zuckerberg to an unprecedented six levels away from dominating the online social space.”

I’m no hater, but this blog– indeed this entire web community– could use a little more nintendo.

http://bit.ly/ng8B

The new design has its pros and the old design has its pros. In general people don’t like change, so whenever you change something it is always hard. What amazes me is that facebook has a wealth of information and they can’t figure out the best design. It would be neat to see some of the iterations they go through.

I don’t make any such assumption. In fact, Twitter innovating is one of the things that may be encouraged by Facebook’s moves. But Twitter innovating (or actually rolling Track back out) will not hurt Facebook.

@Eric – Don’t reply to the first comment just to have your comment higher up on the page. Seriously.

There is room for Twitter and Facebook…. Plenty of it…

I don’t like the new facebook design because it does not have as many functionalities as the old one. Facebook’s new design looks real pretty but if it had the same functionalities as the old one it would have been great.

Mohammad Afaq
Free Website Traffic

CPO RJ Garbowicz was asked what is YourNight.com, he responded, “Picture this; you get home from work in the evenings and you turn on your PC, what do you do . . . answer email . . . browse your social networking or dating site . . . play online games . . . search videos and music . . . shop online . . . peruse job listings . . . check out local events . . . search for a business . . . go to your online banking . . . well you get the point, YourNight.com affords you all of this, and much, much more – all within one colossal, user-friendly portal . . . that’s all I can say for now, since we are still in stealth mode . . . however, as soon as we complete our Series A capital raise of $10 million our purpose and presence will be known.”

For more information, please contact:
RJ Garbowicz President/CPO Extreme Enterprises, Inc.
Phone:727.289.5522
Email:RJ@eeihq.com
PO Box 49271
St Petersburg, FL 33743

Agreed, I don’t think rolling Track back out will hurt Facebook either. But I’m still taking the opposite view on who’s leading who here.

Ever since Twitter spurned Facebook’s takeover offer they’ve been throwing everything over the walls of the castle in an attempt to fend off a perceived attack on their user base. They should just stop it already, the two can coexist and compliment each other.

This has almost nothing to do with listening or not listening “to the masses” and everything to do with Facebook scrambling to create an environment that’s more friendly to marketers while simultaneously trying to steal some of Twitter’s thunder.

In my opinion Facebook has grown beyond Zuckerberg’s ability to manage it competently – and these recent user outrage problems are a small symptom of this. Nothing against Mark, it’s just that people in the early 20′s rarely have the chops to run an enterprise of this size from an operational standpoint.

… from one spammer to another.

Yup I totally agree, I think it is great that we have both of them!!

Change always brings frustration and resistance. Your changing people’s “normal”. The key is to track this over time and see if people adapt and accept the new page as “normal”.

True, and they will whine again when this one changes at all. They will be like, OMG i liked the old one.

@ noob

Don’t get taken by sophmoric clowns. Those comments supposedly from “anjalie” and “ubewe” are fake.

@ noob

Don’t get taken by sophmoric clowns. Those comments supposedly from “anjalie” and “ubewe” are fake.

I think the one from the Garbowicz guy is real though.

You’re changing people’s “your”.

Wikipedia lists the following for the acronym:

Certified Protection Officer, a certification for security guards from the International Foundation of Protection Officers
Chief Petty Officer, a military rank
Chief Privacy Officer, an executive responsible for managing issues of privacy laws and policies
Chief Process Officer, an executive responsible for defining processes rules and guidelines for an organization to follow
Chief Procurement Officer, an executive responsible for supply management
Chief Performance Officer
Chief Production Officer

Which one are you Garbowics?

@that was fake

What is the difference? they are all spammers: the Anjali gal, Ubewe, now this Garbowicz douche bag, etc.

[...] Why would Facebook users leave? They’d have to have a reason, another better service that provides what they apparently feel is lost by the news stream reworking. Certainly not Twitter, the counter-metaphor that is allegedly causing the trouble. Then who? MySpace? Open Social? Windows Live? Why? The problem with Dare’s thesis is that there’s no motivation to leave something that continues to provide the fundamental service… via techcrunchit.com [...]

Don;t waste your time – it’s a made-up title. this guy is a retard spammer: the same ad/comment is all over Techcrunch….

I think there’s something that’s being overlooked here. That is, the users that corner each market.

I learned this distinction over the weekend while catching up on feed reading. I have a tumblr account which is synced to my twitter account which is synced to my facebook status. I my reading I found many things I wanted to pass along. Twitter users don’t mind. That’s part of the relationship – you know people will update and sometimes many, many times. On facebook, no one expects this.

As a result, I got many indications that it’s a bad thing to dominate someone’s stream with your updates. Live updates on twitter = good; facebook = bad. And that’s the fundamental difference and I think the fundamental issue between their competition.

The flow of information is much, much more welcomed on twitter than it is facebook. And that’s the reason they’re doing fine in the same space: the users view on information.

@What is a CPO?

Why can’t it also mean Chief Professional Officer, which is kind of like a CEO.

Wikopedia doesn’t know everything, just most things.

Maybe so, but I couldn’t take the noise level implicit in the new stream. So I haven’t been back to FB really at all since the change.

What’s welcome changes over time. Also, the dynamics you cite help spread a core social graph across many sites, making it easier and easier over time to communicate broadly with focus to a targetted cloud. This in turn becomes valuable in many different ways.

There are several constrained versions of the original Track feature, most notably the one hosted by Dustin Sallings on his TwitterSPy service. He’s dustin on Twitter and either him or his collaborator Ken Sheppardson (kshep) can explain further.

There is something lost with this article. It seems to ignore that business is constantly changing and just like anything, if you piss off enough people, they will find an alternative. Facebook’s changes remind me the launch of Vista. Technology’s evolution is expected to make life easier and less complicated. Facebook as gone the other direction with this change. They are not Twitter and will never be. That is why I use both. Twitter was not taking me away from Facebook, it was only opening me to different means of communicating. Like Vista, FB is trying to be everything to everybody and not satisfying anyone.

Everyone is held accountable to someone, even Mark Z. Nosedives in usership and new membership will be the deciding factor for a swift switch. A heated board meeting can take an intelligent, arrogant 24 year old and make him into a rank and file employee in short order. Remember, this is a very young company that will make several mistakes.

I have cut my FB usage because it only makes me more lost.

(side note: None of my RSS applications or feed integrations work properly any longer. As a marketer, this keeps me from integrating my clients on pages and promoting FB on other websites.)

Maybe you guys don’t understand, but only 1m people have used the vote application. 94% of them are against. However, Facebook has over 150m users. When you consider the fact that under .63% of them (yes, that’s less than 1%) have complained about the changes, you’ll completely understand that Zuckerberg (and the rest of Facebook) couldn’t care less.

And if you’ve ever had the responsibility of administrating a major UI, you’d know that with every single change you make, regardless of whether the data overwhelmingly says it’s an improvement, someone is going to bitch about it.

Tedeks said…
What amazes me is that facebook has a wealth of information and they can’t figure out the best design. It would be neat to see some of the iterations they go through.

One way to do that is to do live online experiment. Dr. Ronny Kohavi (former head of data-mining at Amazon who now works at Microsoft) and his team continually use live online experiment and use statistical hypothesis test to validate the specific design that correlate to high usages of the site (ie, Amazon) which lead to higher sales. The Amazon users never knew that there was a newer design and they came to surf the site, since the incremental changes made by Dr. Kohavi and team, were small so they were unnoticeable to users. The design that correlates to higher usage was then selected for a major design upgrade.

I agree with you here Tedeks that Facebook has already got huge amount of information available to them, which might be very helpful in bringing incremental change to the site:

To Facebook CTO or Senior developers, Dr. Kohavi’s papers (both short & long papers plus his conference & workshop talk-slides) are available from his old Stanford website for download:

The Kohavi’s online experiment at Amazon that you would be interested in are:

#1) “Emetrics 2007 talk on Controlled Experiments”.

#2) “Online Experiments: Lessons Learned”

#3) “Practical Guide to Controlled Experiments on the Web: Listen to Your Customers not to the HiPPO”

It’s not that Zuckerburg isn’t listening. He just isn’t good at public relations. If he see that time being spent on facebook decreases, or actual objective facts that the service is worse now, he will tune his strategy. Every time something changes many will complain. But if the ones are complaining are posting more and spending more time on the website… does it matter?

The correct link to Dr. Ronny Kohavi’s old Stanford website is here. The link in my previous message is for his paper #2.

[...] Whoever conquers Track will be like those who made music and pictures come out of thin air, coursing over invisible wires and virtual rabbit ears. via techcrunchit.com [...]

Another piece covering facebook and twitter in the same article… Do no other websites exist?

You’re right Joand315. I just looked it up. “Chief Professional Officer” is kind of odd though. I’m sure it is not used very often. I wonder what this dude is doing that warrants such a title. Tom, what do you mean it is a made up title? Here’s what I dug up about the guy– Robin Wauters wrote an article about him here http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/09/if-ambition-were-all-it-took-yournight-would-be-sitting-on-gold/

Check out the comments. I’ve never seen a worse a** beating. There are 145 comments all of which were reeming him out. This guy is a joke.

I really don’t like facebook. If I really wanted people to find me by my first and last name I would join Classmates.com. I mean, how much personal information is too much? This is why I like twitter much better–they do not force the first and last name out of you. Whatever happened to privacy?

Facebook has been causing a large uproar in the community lately. It should begin to settle down in a few weeks.

two words re: a 40 minute delay: more servers.

@You’re right -
“Tom, what do you mean it is a made up title?” For “RJ” it means that he needs to have a “title” – He is a dreamer and a charlatan who is doing *everything* at his “company” which is just smoke and mirrors + lies and more lies… He designed and installed the web site, he makes coffee, runs to buy office supplies, takes out the trash, etc. Get the picture?
He is promising everything to everybody, “globally.”
I would not be surprised if he is arrested for running a small-time Ponzi scheme….
“Tom” is an assumed name I use here. I have known “RJ” since he was an employee for a landscaping company.

with the same “confusing how to monetize the site successfully.no matter what facebook do I only got one message to them,”just keep your old pattern and keep serve for free,don’t get to rush to pay the investment until you know what you should really know about your Registrar

Don’t waste valuable comment space while contributing absolutely nothing to discussion. Seriously.

[...] Please Stand By By Steve Gillmor … what do you do . . . answer email . . . browse your social networking or dating site . . . play online games . . . search videos and music . . . shop online . . . peruse job listings . . . check out local events . . . search for a … TechCrunchIT – http://www.techcrunchit.com/ [...]

Since these comments were spawned off of my comment and are unrelated. I have to say I am VERY disappointed in you boys for hijacking my genuine heart felt comment.

SHAME on you!

Have you no decency?

Have you no pride?

Have you no respect?

At least Finke isn’t hiding behind the vast abyss that is the anonymity of the internet.

“Besides, Facebook is offering a free service to us, the end-users. In how far do our remarks count then?”

Considering they still aren’t turning a profit, we’re the ones – their audience and the incredible amount of data they’ve aggregated about us (which is increasingly valuable to outside advertisers) – who are defining Facebook’s value as a company. I’m sure Zuckerberg wouldn’t lose sleep if a few thousand left, but like the saying goes, nothing lasts forever. Look at what they did to Myspace: in a relatively short span of time, they managed to become the market leader.

Will they still be on top in 5 years? Who knows. But if they did something to piss off a few million users (which, granted, is a fraction of their registered accounts), that’s where their house of cards might start to fall, paving the way for a new or current competitor to occupy their space.

Truthfully though, I dunno if that’s gonna happen. Zuckerberg has been quick to correct his mistakes.

We have to remember that while Facebook might be copying or using the same method that has brought Twitter and Friendfeed so much success, it is still its own entity with many other features that the others don’t necessarily have. So while the design is different, the core basics of Facebook are still there. It has more of the “live action” feel that Twitter has, but it’s still Facebook.

[...] Article Source Read also Advertising is Failing on the NetFacebook Reveals Private Photos and Wall PostsGoogle Designer Leaves, because of Data-Centrism Post To:Digg Facebook Yahoo! Buzz Email PREVIOUSAdvertising is Failing on the Net Advertisement [...]

Which is ironic because everything that i’ve been reading about complaint wise on Facebook is that it has “way too much information and it’s overwhelming”. I agree with you, there’s not enough for me honestly.

I liked the old functionality of “show more of this user” or “show less”. That was a sweet function they pulled out.

Honestly look at the flipside. Do you realize how much Facebook has made Myspace work to get them up to par? They’ve realized that Facebook has been grabbing much more attention and decided to add things like: status updates, 3rd party applications, and now a similar status update “wall” just like Facebook. Most people insist that Facebook stole these ideas from Myspace.. Two-to-three years ago Myspace was just about posting bulletins, and commenting on someone’s page.

They’ve climbed to the top of the hill fairly fast and are slowing down with innovation and have to borrow things from other sites that have worked well.. Everyone has done it. They will continue to do it. Unlike a tride-and-true corporate pen-and-paper venture that would take weeks or even months to update the look, a social networking website can take however long it takes to code and with a press of a button deploy a brand new UI. This will not be the last update to the page so everyone needs to chill.

Ever heard of sample statistics?

[...] [...]

[...] Steve Gillmor om nya Facebook hos Techcrunch: Please stand by [...]

What is this ‘Seriously’ and all this thing going on??

http://www.smartbloggerz.com

Exactly. In my company we test changes to our website on a small sample of our customers, and then use the test results to roll out the winner to the entire customer base. Facebook skipped a step here.

He started out working for a landscaping company? I guess he’s gone a long way… You gotta give credit where credit is due. You may not like his company, but other people do, otherwise there wouldn’t be a company. Don’t listen to these pessimists RJ & YourNight.

You do bring up some very valid points dude!

RT
http://www.online-privacy.pro.tc

@Tom

In fact, here’s what a professor said about them (are you smarter than a professor Tom?):

“I’ve seen thousands of new product ideas and business plans over the years–both from teaching MBA and Entrepreneurship courses at USF, and through my business consulting with numerous startups and growth companies. I have to say that EEI, especially with its exciting all-in-one-place ”YourNight” concept, is among my ‘TOP 5’ EVER. The Founder/CEO exudes ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ and his New Venture Team is solidly on the road to create a great success.”
~Dr. Ken Van Voorhis, Professor Emeritus and Founder of the Small Business Institute and Small Business Development Center at USF; as well as President of Effective Performance, Inc.

[...] the team at Facebook, should not listen to the naysayers on this one, I mean it.  Just keep doing what you are doing, focus on improving the service and finding a monetization strategy (one that works), and let us [...]

Here’s the simple fact of it. A ton of people don’t use Friend Feed because the interface is absolute garbage. Of those that overcome it and do use Friend Feed a large portion still only tolerate it because of the value the service provides.

Emulating Friend Feed design elements was an idiotic decision that shows a blatant lack of appreciation for the importance a UI plays in a service’s adoption and user opinion.

It’s not about the new services they added – those are all great. It’s about moving backwards instead of forwards from an interface standpoint.

[...] read more | digg story [...]

[...] Link source:http://www.techcrunchit.com/2009/03/22/please-stand-by/ [...]

facebook, twitter, friendfeed…. what’s the difference? they all basically do the same thing now. i can update my status with my facebook account as much as I want and i can make it say whatever i want. what’s the difference between facebook and twitter? except that facebook has many more users and allows users to have a more comprehensive profiles.

doesn’t anyone else see how twitter is just going to get a fan base before adding it’s own comprehensive profile? and then we’ll have to log into 2 locations and keep track of 2 sets of friends and we’ll have 2 status updates to keep track up and we’ll wast 2x as much time and then facebook will buy twitter and we’ll be back to where we started.

[...] while Steve Gillmor is arguing that inertia would tend to win out, I’d say that he may be underestimating the righteous indignation that can come with [...]

[...] which copied Twitter somewhat. Or at least, that’s how I perceive it. And it’s not just [...]

[...] to social networking, such as ‘Social Web sites face transparency questions‘ and ‘Facebook copying Friendfeed, which originally copied Twitter. [...]

[...] a Twitter en todos lados. Entro a Facebook, y su diseño está twitterizado. ¿Youtube? Con botón twitterizador. Digg sacó un toolbar: twitterizada. Los medios incorporan [...]

yep, i miss that feature too!

1) hide or delete all emails from the obsession.
2) delete all links to their myspace, flickr, facebook, etc.
3) remove phone # from cell.
4) keep busy with other fun people- preferably not friends of the obsession!

The thing about facebook is that they still have the greatest functionality overall. That’s why users can get pissed about all the different changes and still stick with it. The problem is that there is a point when people will start leaving, and that point is coming soon…

I’m intrigued by the quote that Zuckerberg is unconcerned by user feedback- I doubt it’s entirely true, obviously he’s cashed in and wants to keep doing so, and having more users is how that happens. But at the same time, let’s consider how facebook users voice they’re opinions: they make “go back to the old facebook” groups! On the new version of facebook! Their actions are more valuable user feedback than what they claim to be annoyed by- they’re saying “do something we don’t like and we’ll build you some content for free because we’re stuck here.”

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