Thursday, December 6, 2007

Facebook is now living in the reality of our opt-in world


So I'm reading Mark Zuckerberg's Beacon apology on the Facebook blog today and I unconsciously start humming Madonna's Material World. And my inner voice is singing - "We are living in a opt-in world and I am an opt-in girl. You know that we are..." and for those of you that know me - yep, even my inner voice is singing it off tune.

Anyway, I'm surprised that the up-and-coming, over-buzzed, media-darling, "we are grassroots", all about community Social Networking Site (SNS) didn't get from the get that communities live in an opt-in world and we *all* are opt-in girls - well, people. (sigh)

Seriously, how could there not be an uproar over constantly having to opt-out? That's so first days of email campaigns logic - faulty, slimy logic.

I wonder if Facebook did any user acceptance testing with Beacon? Not in the UI but in the actual concept down to opting out with every action. Are they that removed from the conversation pulse that they would need to do testing to know how wrong opt-out is? I'm a little stumped over the rush to market and the lack of common sense.

Lesson here: Don't lose sight of what got you to where you are.

There's good news, Zuckerberg did respond (finally) and admitted Facebook's mistakes over the last several weeks with Beacon. Yep, they changed their tune...Facebook is realizing they to are living in an opt-in world.

2 comments:

Rebecca Rachmany said...

Despite Facebook's words, Beacon is still opt-in, not opt-out. Despite the minor uproar among the extremely clued-in minority, I am pretty convinced that Beacon will be reinstated, gradually over time, in it's original full glory, if not more extensively. The big brands will wait until the populous has accepted it as a fact, and then will opt right back in.

Weist Family said...

Thanks for reading my post and your comments, Rebecca. Still can't get the tune out of my head.