Brands on Facebook are nothing more than dissonance now. Whereas before they were meaningless, and the pages were little more than non-functional, limiting, and fairly non-interactive static places….
….now they are annoying, interruptive, and totally dysfunctional. The new layout for Facebook has turned personal conversations into nothing more than reality TV with advertisements at random intervals. Brands and Pages used to be benign, and it was obvious there weren’t *doing* much of anything. But now people look at these pages as malicious marketing that is getting in the way of their social network. The furor I have seen is remarkable, but I hadn’t experienced it until today.
I have three Facebook accounts… two for work, one for personal. Because I sorta “work” I don’t get “personal” too much… but I was on there this morning jibber jabbering, catching up, being a voyuer… and all of a sudden one of my *FAVOURITE BRANDS EVER* pops up with a blurb about an art showing.
I won’t say what it is; but it is sassy, salacious, lurid, and compelling. So a little blurb pops up into my stream. Remember…. I love this brand and what they do.. sort of punk chic stuff. Maybe I do get personal, and will let you know I don’t mind salaciousness. But, we are talking about something that should be compelling to my core.. a brand I have followed for years, enjoyed, interacted with, and whole heartedly endorsed.
I found it annoying… but brushed it off like a harmless spider on the table.. ignoring it but knowing it may come back. Then another popped up… and another. So what did I do with my favourite brand’s page? I immediately unfanned it. Immediately. I don’t want that information in my personal, closed network of friends. If I want information on the brand, I will search it out… go to the site… peruse the conversation. But I don’t want it in my feed. It was just total dissonance, and totally irrelevant.
Facebook…. you just made a terrible mistake.
I know I know… all these bloggers like to shoot from the hip and say, “critical fault”, “nail in the coffin” nonsense…. but just like most emotive reporting (if you want to call it that), it really is just a storm of hot air brewing in an empty tea kettle. Okay I know it doesn’t totally make sense, but you get the idea.
Video didn’t kill the radio star, and the earlier, initial report of radio being crushed by TV was premature. They found a symbiotic relationship, and their niche. FB is an a/v laden TV, while Twitter is more like visual radio. The analogy is flawed, but they are two things similar that are fundamentally very different…
Facebook made an error thinking they were like twitter. And albeit all of *us* (the eyes that hit this are undoubtedly thoughtful – industry eyes well versed in social media) know that twitter and FB are different…. FB didn’t realize that. I am not sure why, but in wanting an open stream for brands to interact with users, they neglected to see the difference between a closed and open network. All this immediately before their CFO leaves? Maybe they finally realized that the ad model won’t help them reach profitability? Maybe because the ad model is failing, as Mr. Khan from JP Morgan suggested?
They want a page’s wall to post to user profiles, effectively allowing marketing and more “business” to happen on facebook…. they want a brand’s wall posts sitting in the middle of a private stream of communication within a closed network? I hadn’t really thought about it during the initial changes, but it just seemed odd.
Twitter is an open stream of networking and collaboration. People ask strangers questions about how-to, products, and more. FB has a closed network of friends interacting about personal things. This difference is obvious, but let’s talk about FB’s myopia in attempting to capture all of social networking, the “there can be only one!” mentality. This has caused FB to move into territory that is unfamiliar, and it is seemingly eroding the base of trust and interactivity that made FB so popular to begin with.
Why did Myspace (maybe this is premature) fail? The answer is that there was no accountability, no verifiability, and no real trust… which is where FB swooped in and confirmed status based off real world markers. Is this person real? Where do they work? Where did they go to school? When? What’s their birthdate? Facebook found a way to solve that accountability problem, which gained them quite a bit of trust with users. This trust has been challenged multiple times with things like Beacon, etc. The public outcry is because FB was famous for having built a trustworthy social network and then started eroding that trust by attempting to inject business and marketing. Apparently, people didn’t want that on FB.
What’s funny is that the Beacon outcry was a huge disaster, but I am thinking it was a gain for FB because they were able to immediately rectify a big problem noting canceled accounts and the media buzz. In light of this new issue, I think the erosion of the users trust will be just as severe, if not more so… but in a long term, sustained migration away to new networks (that are inevitably on the horizon).
The new problem might take far longer to discover… instead of a large group of people complaining, closing accounts, causing a stir immediately…. you are going to have one or two people at a time slowly get frustrated with “advertisements” and walk away, or unfan pages making any business commerce obsolete. I still would love to know what that commerce is supposed to be anyway, but I guess that is a different post.
Now, I am using one of my largest, most popular brands to run an experiment for our fans:
“Cheers to all our fans! I would love to know your honest opinion. Facebook changed without asking all of you what *YOU* want. Do you find it an imposition or annoying to see pages interacting with your closed network of friends? I won’t post on the wall if it is dissonance. Please let me know!”
I will update you as I find out more information, but the test will be successful. Either I find out what they think, or they don’t say a word and I further note that no *real* or *meaningful* interaction happens on Facebook in regards to business or brands.
It *might* be fine for posting events, but I really didn’t think anything more than long term brand building.
Now I am thinking it is not only *not* that… I think their new layout might actually kill any ability to market or further a brand. Enough wall postings and people will be unfanning pages immediately. “Why did I fan Tabasco hot sauce anyway?”, “He’s a great musician but I don’t need to know everything he is thinking!”, or “I love that hotel, but who cares about events I can never go to?”, ad naseoum.
Whatever the case, these are my ramblings. I am one of the most patient, accepting, and brand aware people out there… and I was annoyed to the extent that I immediately acted, an unfanned a page. If you have a guy like me doing that, no telling what people less tolerant of marketing will do, and how quickly they will react.
I don’t think this is anything Facebook can fix… I just think it is something we will have to ride out and watch. Any comments on this would be appreciated! I am not going to shoot from the hip and suggest this is doom for Facebook, but I will suggest that this will rapidly become a problem. Pages were totally benign before; now they are, frankly, annoying. I know I am not the only one that thinks so… what about you?
The only response so far was that 2 of our fans “thumbs up”‘d my question. I wouldn’t necessarily count that as interactivity. =)
1) Another person thumbed up the comment, but that is it. I would suggest that means there is little interaction, and the absence of action wouldn’t suggest approval, in my eyes.
2) The stream thing happened again… One of my favourite restaurants in SF keeps spamming my stream. Interesting. What’s more interesting is that all the pages I am a fan of aren’t doing squat. So I think I am starting to write off FB as a waste. Huh.
Whoa… this site is pretty awesome 🙂 your layout is really well designed, and your blogs are (judging from what i’ve read) very interesting. heehee… consider yourself favorited. 😛