Year in Review, Part 1

Today we’re taking swings at gorillas. More than a year ago I posted two blog entries: one on Facebook and one on Google, both intimating that the companies were starting to veer off their positive trajectories. The year and change since has proven this out, and I’d like to take a look at what went wrong and how they can fix it.

In this post, we’ll look at Facebook. I wrote of the need for social networking services to maintain the natural walls users create between their varying social circles. The current thinking behind network value is fundamentally flawed because all the models assume always-increasing value based on the number of nodes (i.e. people or profiles) on the network. The reality is that the wrong node, or a node added carelessly, can destroy value on a network. This should be common sense: if my boss Facebooks me, I will suddenly restrict the information I’m adding to the network and how I share it (note: my boss, Dave, is pretty awesome and I think we are, in fact, Facebook friends).

None of this is news to you. Countless great articles have been written on Facebook’s labyrinth privacy settings (thanks Greg Chew), and about the obfuscated process for “Facebook suicide.”(thanks Lawson Kight) The less vitriolic among us are simply throttling back the use of the network, consuming less and posting much less. We’ve followed a natural adoption curve and most users have reunited with a handful of  true friends with whom they’d lost touch, and the site hasn’t provided much value since. Sure power users crank out updates every 10 minutes and teenagers obsess over their friend's stats, but if anything, that obscures the valuable content even more. Mark Zuckerberg thinks (or is pretending) the problem is complexity, and he promises to simplify. Zuckerberg doesn’t understand the problem has little to do with usability and everything to do with intent. Maybe Zuckerberg is the problem? He wants Facebook to not only own all of the social information on the planet, but to expose it.

But Zuckerberg has good reasons to think the way he does. Facebook trades in data, and current network theory leads us to believe that Facebooks value is proportional to the volume of data and number of connections between nodes, so it’s understandable that their reaction is to open up more data and connect more people. Unfortunately that is precisely the opposite of what they need to do. They don’t need data and connections, they need high value data and connections, which is precisely what they lose when they open the network too much. What is high value? This is a social network, so exclusive, insider, for-your-eyes only content and emotional, personal information traded between people who are truly friends and strengthening their bonds of friendship is of high value. The kinds of exchanges that, except for a few exhibitionists, don’t happen in front of stadium crowds. They happen between limited, like-minded friends protected by walls from the other circles in which each participant may travel.

What can Facebook do? Tactically, they should switch from a default opt-in on new features to a default of opt-out. Simple. Strategically, they first need to re-examine their fundamental premise that more is better. Focus on cultivating high-value content and connections. Then they need to reconnect directly with their users. The only reason they have so many settings they need to “simplify” is because they are placing the burden of configuration on the user, a classic symptom of a product team disconnected from their customers. Zuckerberg needs to remind his team that their goal is to provide real value to their userbase, and the bottom line will follow rather than lead their progress.

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