Further Facebook frustrations

Have you noticed toe Facebook latest?

I know moan about Facebook quite a lot.

I also know that I use it too much anyway.

But they do seem to be forcing unnecessary and inconvenient changes upon people without even researching if it is going to be any use to people.

It has a history of rolling things out with little market research, little business-impact-analysis, or little profit-maximisation suggestion.

So, previously (click 'moan' above) I showed how "most recent" on the mobile apps actually wasn't the most recent.

Now, the "most recent" default on the main website is no sticky. It isn't a default at all. It has to be actively selected.

It's frustrating.

Really frustrating.

"Top stories" - the new default - has never taken off. People haven't gone to the lengths of going through their massive (or in my case, modestly 450) list of friends, to select which of them pops up as a top story. People are actually getting really annoyed at stories 'disappearing' or not even showing up in their news feed, because they have either checked their mobile feed, and gotten not the "most recent" as it claims, but the "most recently liked or commented upon", (if they even have selected that rather than the mobile default of "Top Stories") or because they haven't realised that the 'sort' facility auto-defaults to "Top Stories".

So, where's the business reason for this?

Is a Top Story more likely to feature promoted or sponsored posts? Is that why - because they are more active about you spending money?

If not, then really what is the business case for the change? I am struggling to find one - the reason that a highly underused, confusing, disliked and ultimately off-putting feature should be implemented seems to shriek short-term gain at the expense of a long-term relationship. I know, this is the story of my life.

But, we all know that Facebook market-capitalised. And that means that Facebook needs to business-justify things to the market, otherwise the market becomes dissatisfied loses interest, shares decrease and Facebook devalues. Facebook has to be profitable or it loses investors, interest and value, essentially. Just ask Apple whose shares this week lost over 10% of their value simply on the basis that, although they sold more phones and stuff than they've ever sold, they still didn't sell enough to meet the expectations of their investors. Facebook, though, seems to justify its (substantially diminished since float, but still) exceptionally high market valuation on the basis of a huge, sticky client base (sticky because they come back regularly or stay for a long time). It justifies changes on the basis that they are either 'what people want'; 'what they need' (to make it even more sticky) or 'what they will get used to' for a decision which will rankle the users, but be profitable otherwise. Afterall, ask the users if they want to see adverts and they will say no; but it needs to make money - it isn't an altruistic gesture.


But it over-relies and over-exaggerates this sitting customer base and is seriously at risk of disenfranchising them altogether. Yes, there are some changes that users may not initially like but they get used to - take Timeline. Everyone pretty much loves Timeline now, though they didn't at the start. But the changes that are purely commercial need to be as little intrusive as possible - the more they irritate that user-base, the less sticky those users are.

And it shows. At the recent launch of the "social graph search" - the ability to search Facebook fare more intuitively than recently (Facebook search has, for me, always been poor and a massive weakness for the service) all the talk on Twitter was "who actually uses Facebook anymore anyway?".

Just ask Myspace how secure Facebook's position actually is. Can it impose these changes without fear of reprisal? Maybe it thinks it is just too big to lose it's users. Many a corporation has made that mistake.