Facebook Faces Flap
College-oriented social networking site Facebook faces customer backlash against a new feature it just launched. The company claims it did copious research with its members before implementing the feature, but still was surprised by the magnitude of the negative response.
The company failed to follow a few simple rules of customer-centric
product development development:
- Anticipate that new features will be liked and disliked by different segments of customers
- Give customers who dislike a new feature an easy way to avoid it
- Give customers who like a new feature a way to pay to keep it
The company should be pleased, however, at the passionate response its members have shown, and try to channel that enthusiasm into better research and development. And it should also be pleased that a lot more people are talking about Facebook today than they were yesterday.
