Facebook, a social networking platform that I am sure you are aware of has been attracting the attention of quite a number of users for quite some time. As seen in the Google Trends chart here, you can see the impact as compared to others like MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn.

They don’t appear to be slowing down and the trended line shows that their growth rate is phenomenal. OK, so I’m not here to pay homage to one of the many means to expend a large amount of time, rather to look at what impact changes to your website can affect your users.

If you hadn’t heard, Facebook recently redesigned the user home page and it was a dramatic change that has not been very well received by their users. An application to share your thoughts and vote on the new design was also set up and has incited an internal fire storm or feedback, currently it has over 1.3 million votes, of which over 94% have responded with a negative vote along with over 660,000 comments. So, how did Facebook respond?

With the recent home page changes, we’re trying to present the right balance between what’s happening right now and what’s interesting over a longer period of time. We realize that both are important and getting them both right is crucial for the product to work. In the last few weeks, you’ve seen us shift the main emphasis towards real-time conversations and updates as the entry point to Facebook. We’re working hard to make this stream more valuable, and also to build out the richness and relevance of the Highlights section. Responding to Your Feedback

What do I mean? The thing about genius is that it is rarely recognized as it is initially presented and usually not appreciated until much later. I am not saying that the new design is genius (I actually dislike it immensely).

The thing about change is that everyone likes the idea, but don’t really want change if it affects them. I think that they could have used some more usability testing, but I think that almost any change would have incited feedback. Facebook has changed since they started in 2004, but since November 2007, they weren’t the leading social networking site and have over doubled their daily unique visitors as well.

So, what is there to learn from the negative feedback? Not much, but there is a hidden gem though:

When you are the leader you still have to innovate to keep your competitors trying to keep up… MySpace, on the other hand, has remained relatively constant during the same time frame. Two quick points:

When you are not #1 you have to catch up. To catch up, you have to do it better or different.

When you are #1 you have to outpace your competition. To set the pace, you have to step it up and keep moving.

I presume that Facebook sees Twitter as a possible contender in their space and the changes show their concern with the new trend of micro-blogging and it’s impact on users behavior and their time online. I am very interested in the impact of the redesign and users along with their attempts to keep Twitter at bay.

What are your thoughts?

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 25th, 2009 at 12:05 pm and is filed under Networking. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

About the Author: In-house SEO for a private travel company with great success. Has been influential in developing and building a niche travel directory and search engine. I enjoy learning and sharing information on my blog, SEOPittfall.com to others in an effort to build relevant, content driven websites with the user in mind.