Are consumers playing games with Facebook?

OnlineMediaDaily - Section Two (“Around the Net”) hit the in-box this afternoon and the lead item was from VentureBeat reporting on Facebook’s about face on its latest redesign in response to user criticism. Goodness, I thought, these poor people at Facebook can’t seem to make anything stick. Then I thought back to the redesigns I’d been around during my career with magazines and newspapers and recalled the howls of protest that attended all of them. USA Today was a biggie - not necessarily a redesign of an existing property, but a redesign, none-the-less, and there was a furious amount of whining and nashing of teeth among the newspaper elite when it launched. After years as a small pocket-size magazine on the scale of Reader’s Digest, Yankee Magazine reinvented itself recently by going to a standard 8 1/2 X 11 magazine format. I determined to be a sympathizer with the editors of Yankee and think positively about the new look when it happened. Others were not so determined and editors dutifully published their letters many of which went something like this: “Like my father and his father before him I have been a subscriber to Yankee Magazine. Now, sadly, after nearly forty years I must cancel my subscription. Good-bye Yankee.” The redesign, however, stayed. And, the letters ended. And the world moved on.

This got me thinking about some of the equipment that may be necessary in order to publish in a consumer-controlled world. Conviction, is one thing. Discipline is another. A loud-speaker to broadcast “Testing. Testing. 123,” may be another. Finally, perhaps, patience. 

I have no opinion on the Facebook redesign. I am a Facebook user, but not much of one. Avid users may have compelling reasons for why the new look was unacceptable. Facebook editors (I’ll call them editors) may also have compelling reasons for why rolling-back this latest iteration was necessary. Apart from all that, however, we should worry about recognizing when consumer-control has turned into a game. Anyone that has brought-up children will know what I mean. There is that ”Ah Ha!” moment whilst attending to a small child in a booster seat at a table who drops a spoon on the floor. As a responsible adult you pick-up the spoon and place it back in front of the child. You carry on your conversation with the other adult in the room if there happens to be one. Then, “Bink!”, the spoon hits the floor again. You pick it up. “Bink!”, down it goes. “Bink!” Which is when it hits you that this is a game and you stop picking-up the spoon, or take it away.

It strikes me that Facebook may be well-advised to let the spoon sit on the floor next time.

Living with the handicappers

One of the most interesting things to have watched and experienced over 14 some years in the Internet space is the education, if you will, of the broader financial community in the media and advertising business. On one level it has been inspiring to watch capital markets swarm to an idea and erect a booming business metropolis where only a short time ago there was nothing. On another, it has been thoroughly disruptive to the orderly migration of the advertising business to its new life in a digital age. Case in point is the fascination that Henry Blodget shared yesterday with Ross Sandler of RBC over the fact that at current growth rates Facebook could surpass Google in total unique visitors by 2011 or 2012. Blodget went so far as to exclaim in the title of his post, “Facebook could kill Google.”

The commenters to Blodget’s post in the Silicon Alley Insider were mostly united in their response, which was ”So what”? Indeed, I agree. But, it is still so interesting to observe the irrepressible urge of people in the financial community to handicap the race, whatever it is. Sadly, it is not a benign sort of behavior as people like Henry Blodget can still cause the market jerk its head around and even tear off in wayward directions. (Sigh.) Perhaps that’s the price one pays for having  benefactors.