Comments on: Is Facebook’s Zuckerberg Right? Sometimes Listening to Your Customers is “Stupid.”

By: Karlis Apkalns

Karlis Apkalns — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 03:26:50 +0000

Sometimes Listening to Your Customers is "Stupid": http://bit.ly/8v1LLY

By: Lauren N Ingram

Lauren N Ingram — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 10:43:03 +0000

RT @aprildunford: Is Facebook's Zuckerberg Right? Sometimes Listening to Your Customers is "Stupid." http://bit.ly/8v1LLY

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:31:55 +0000

Older article, but I <3 it RT @SophieBifield: Sometimes Listening to Your Customers is "Stupid" – http://bit.ly/7XJVY6 (Via @aprildunford)

By: Sophie Bifield

Sophie Bifield — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:24:05 +0000

Sometimes Listening to Your Customers is "Stupid" – http://bit.ly/7XJVY6 (Via @aprildunford)

By: Andreas Rudolph

Andreas Rudolph — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:52:43 +0000

Hi April
recently Facebook made it into the German prime time news with negative PR, because they changed their privacy rules, without having asked their customers before doing so (aca Facebook’s Privacy Flap).
If I can assume he does not mean it in the old fashion way, then, I think he is right and he is wrong at the same time:
- If you want to improve an existing product, you’d certainly ask customers
- If you create a disruptive product, you’d better ask non customers.
Recently I wrote about innovation by lead users, because I found an interesting information “Thus, …, lead user idea-generation projects clearly did generate new product concepts with much greater commercial potential than did traditional, non-LU methods” – Eric von Hippel (2005). These lead users are special customers, or non-customers, or sometimes customers of others. For more information, see http://www.produkt-manager.net/2009/lead-users-in-der-produktentwicklung/ (in German), or download the original study (English) links at the very end of this article.
cheers, Andreas

By: Stephane Jolicoeur

Stephane Jolicoeur — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 05:36:53 +0000

@strem @mattforsythe sometimes we need to shift our internal client’s thinking users are willing to type our urls http://tinyurl.com/ct8bwa

By: Aileen

Aileen — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 15:24:06 +0000

Great post!
I think the flaw in facebook’s design was not the features themselves but the PR campaign the change. (the term I’ve seen used for this is Change Management) And to tie this back to your post, I think there was a communication gap between the innovation and “core customer problems”. A good example of this gap management is Meebo, where they announce or explain changes.
As a fairly heavy user, I didn’t really understand the benefits of the changes and without that understanding I find the change frustrating.
I know facebook is still a “startup” but when you have 100M users, I think you have to grow up a little and be more strategic with your product releases. It comes with the territory.

By: April Dunford

April Dunford — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 08:17:24 +0000

LOL! I like your style John. That’s really what it boils down to in some ways isn’t it? If, on the way to delivering the broader vision, the user base gets completely annoyed, then their issue will be how to unroll some of the annoying stuff and replot the way forward.
Thanks!
April

By: April Dunford

April Dunford — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 08:13:54 +0000

Hi Sam,
Thanks a lot for the comment and your perspective. I think Facebook is moving toward being a platform that can cover many different types of interactions between “friends”, however you define that. I see Twitter’s mandate as being narrower than that but they are still a very immature company compared to Facebook (their business model is still largely not publicly defined). I for one am interested to see how all of these platforms – Facebook, Myspace, Twitter evolve in the future.
April

By: John A.

John A. — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:07:58 +0000

I think the whole discussion about “disruptive companies don’t listen to their customers” is a bit of a red herring.
The issue is a lot simpler: the new Facebook interface just plain sucks!
Everything Zuckerberg is trying to accomplish in terms of moving the business forward could have been accomplished *without* turning the Facebook main page into a stream of random noise.
Prediction: it won’t be long before Facebook backs off the changes, maybe by publicly eating crow, but more likely my making the new layout optional.