Why Facebook has never listened and why it definitely won’t start now

Scoble is treating this issue like it's black and white, when in fact it's more complicated. In reality, Zuckerberg should ignore some of his users, and listen to others.<p>People who complain about these types of changes generally fall into one of two categories:<p>1) Stubborn people who just hate change. They are used to something being a certain way, and are inconvenienced by having to change <i>their</i> thought pattern, even if it has an overall positive effect.<p>2) People who dislike the change for specific, actionable reasons, and would not be opposed to the change if their issues were resolved. These issues are often related to the inability to do something that was possible in the previous version, or legitimate usability issues which were not tested thoroughly enough before making the change.<p>Facebook should listen to the people who fall under category 2 and ignore category 1. A few minor changes to the new format would go a long way in making the majority of users satisfied.

I'm sorry but the Porsche analogy is just crap. If you ask Porsche enthusiasts, they will not list "trunk room" or "more leg room" as desirable features of their next Porsche. If you ask the thousands of people who buy a Porsche because it is a status symbol, then yes, they will want it to be more like a Volvo. Does Porsche listen to the former? Heck yes they do. And the latter? They are laughed at and ignored while their checks are cashed.<p>For the record, I am indifferent to the redesign but do not use Facebook too much. FWIW, I think the average facebook user is just scared of a website changing in general and the concept of "redesign" is entirely lost on them.

Wait, what? He's disappointed because his announcement of his wife's pregnancy did NOT release a howling horde of marketeers trying to sell him more shit? Jesus, what a sad sack.

Is it possible to suck up more than this?

I think its a bit of a stretch to forecast the current redesign to something that will be happening decades later. I can't accept the fact that even in 2015 it will be the same game on the internet much less 2035. Scoble sometimes has some insightful writeups, but somehow correlating the facebook redesign to technology ubiquity in the future is a murky forecast at best. No one can predict what will happen then. The future on the web remains to be built.

I don't care that much either way about the re-design, however, it seems kind of dumb to tick off your users on purpose.<p>We are talking about basic usability here, not whether a luxury sports car that less than 1% of the population owns during their mid-life crisis has a trunk.

Facebook is just trying to prevent itself from becoming irrelevant. It realizes that the service it offers it not unique in any significant way and it can get left by the way side when the next big thing comes along.<p>It's still a young company and without an established business model we can't really hold them to too much. You won't expect an application in beta to be a beacon of stability and usability. This is the stage facebook is in and it should be allowed to evolve until they find a sustainable business model.

Uh being contacted by lots of companies because you announce having a baby is definitely NOT the future. Unless Facebook ad Twitter design away the "unsubscribe" button.

Terrible article. The author put his foot in his mouth to talk up a numerically successful 24-year-old taken by the old to be an emblem of our generation, even though most within our generation just wish the guy would go away.<p>This is going to sound like it's borne out of resentment, but I don't intend it that way: Mark Zuckerberg's problem is that he never failed, and that he never was in the position where failure was remotely possible. Before Facebook's rise, he had ridiculous amounts of PR handed to him, and then got absurd VC investments-- again, literally handed to him. So, the end result of this is that he can't take success gracefully. This is why he pisses people off, and it's also why Facebook is such a mess. If he can't handle success well in the public, why would we expect him to be any more humble and attuned in private?