Don't Blame Facebook For User Backlash

User backlash is becoming a predictable reaction to redesigns of Facebook. Polls show that 95% of people disapprove of recent changes to the news feed experience, rejecting the “stream and filter” system.

It seems, as Robert Scoble puts it, that Facebook has “pissed off its users” with each reinvention it undertakes. Back in 2006, the introduction of a news feed sparked a major outcry, with users petitioning and boycotting the changes. Today, people are just as furious: The “Petition Against The New Facebook” has garnered support from over 1.7 million people. 

Popular opinion suggests that Facebook isn’t listening to its customers – that it pursues an introspected schedule of monetization changes that consistently miss the mark with users.    

However, it would be a mistake to reduce the current discontent to bad strategy. Instead, psychological findings about the role that uncertainty plays in adoption of new products could provide a sounder explanation of why Facebook users are so resistant to change.   

In 2002, Princeton’s Daniel Kahneman won a Noble Prize, for discovering that people are impacted more by the loss of familiar product experiences than the benefits presented by new, unfamiliar improvements. 

The feud between Facebook and its users seems to stick to this trend of “status-quo bias”. Michael Arrington notes that when it comes to Facebook, “making users happy is a suckers game” because you won’t end up pushing the envelope. 

There is a lesson in Arrington’s comment: consumers are generally conservative when it comes to new product innovation. In fact, it’s well documented that the majority (approximately 84%) of the population do not adopt new products immediately.     

The repeated backlash that Facebook experiences is likely linked to the idea that it cannot phase out its innovations to different groups. It can’t avoid the 84% of the population that would rather stick with what they already know, for the mean time. A Facebook redesign affects everyone, all at once.

Something to think about: Could Facebook limit backlash by phasing out changes to those who are most accommodating?