With Facebook having a reported 800 million users, Mark Zuckerberg has clearly developed a revolutionary social media tool. But with anything that is as popular as Facebook, you must keep improving it in order to keep users interested in it. Right?
At a recent Facebook strategy conference, held in San Francisco, the company unveiled their plans of transforming into a media hub. Not only does Facebook want to continue being the leading website for social communication- but they now want to offer new features which will help them market out new products too.
With new partners such as Netflix, and Spotify, you will be able to see what your friends are listening to or watching on their computers. Their hopes are that this slight change will have a positive impact on sales for their partners. In the long run, these changes are absolutely essential for the company’s growth, but some Facebook users don’t see it this way. Truthfully, I think most are just concerned that they won’t be able to ‘figure out’ the new Facebook.
In the Facebook Blog, after a recent posting about the news, there were comments from almost five thousand users stating their outrage:
“Facebook is completely ruined, it's confusing, it's not fluid and it's hardly user friendly. I hate it now which is a shame because I have absolutely it loved for the last four years”
“I WANT MY OLD FB BACK! I DO NOT LIKE YOU DECIDING WHAT I WANT AND DON'T WANT...... IT IS MY CHOICE...NOT YOURS!”
After I read some of these comments, I stopped to think about why people thought Facebook (which is ultimately a free service) was always going to remain unchanged. I have come to my own personal conclusion that many users on the web aren’t aware of how Web 2.0 works.
In a recent lecture during my Social Media class, Andrea Tavchar (our professor) talked about the difference between Web 1.0 and 2.0.
She explained that Web 1.0 was merely an information hub, whereas 2.0 conveys a two-way communication platform. This allows you to communicate with people all over the world, spark conversations, and voice opinions. It also allows companies to grow with how easy it is to find information on its target audience.
When Facebook was developed, it created a whole new way for companies to collect information. They can now pay Facebook to find out what your favorite colour is, favorite food, favorite bands, and favorite hair products. The amount of information they can collect is endless.
Now ask yourself, why wouldn’t you take advantage of this if you were a product developer for a company?
All Facebook is doing now is collecting more data from its consumers, and marketing to them to turn a profit. With the amount of active and committed users they have and can influence, they are sure to be successful with this.
I believe what they are doing is an absolutely genius business move. I will continue to love and support Facebook, maybe even more so because I respect the risk they took in doing this.
Will your loyalty to Facebook stay as is? Or will you run and never look back?
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