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Potential Mass Exodus from Facebook as User Satisfaction Dips Further (4885 hits)

( I always thought FB was well, stupid) I hated the name...maybe it is the intense dislike for Mr. Zuckerberg).

Author: David Amerland
Published: July 26, 2011 at 6:12 pm
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It was only a short three months ago that I warned that Facebook would suffer if a viable alternative came along and offered a better user experience.

Google+ is only a month old and, as Facebook’s user-experience woes continue customer satisfaction seems to be at an all-time low

Facebook may face mass exodus

The dissatisfaction felt by Facebook users found an outlet when PC magazine ran an informal poll which revealed that a potential 50% of those questioned were prepared to abandon the social network. Facebook’s inability to ‘get’ the very users which have given it the power it now enjoys may, in the end, prove its undoing.

Loyalty on the web is as fickle as banks and supermarket chains have found it to be in the real world. Ultimately users migrate to whatever online app suits their needs best and bothers them the least and early adopters are followed by the masses. Real world business try to stem the tide through initiatives intended to engage with their customer base and generate a true brand following. Online, where the engagement should be easier, this rarely happens successfully, as Facebook’s case shows.

Is it likely that as many as 50% of its 750 million users will abandon the popular social network? The answer is no, probably not. Facebook’s membership base in the US and English-speaking countries may be shrinking as disenchantment grows but it is still growing in other countries.

Western members are what drives business however and there is a possibility that unless Facebook takes heed of all this and really shapes up it will find itself, outmanoeuvred, outprogrammed and outgunned by Google’s nimble response to social networking needs on the web.

With Google+ still in Beta and by invitation only there is still time for Facebook to turn things around. Doing so however requires a giant leap in the ego stakes and some major wiping of egg of its face. Should it manage to do that it will give Google a run for its money, create a healthy sense of competition and offer all of us the option to stay and be enamoured by its new-found edge and sense of contrition. Should it fail, we will at some point soon, be talking of Facebook with the same sense of dejected history we reserve for Geocities and MySpace.

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