Sheer Genius?

     Every once in a while, as a consumer, you get one of those "what were they thinking?" moments.
     Recently, we've had two:  the Netflix debacle, and today the Facebook fracas.  Both lead you to wonder if anyone lucid is running the ship at either place.
     Yes, this is a blog about business social media, so we won't get involved in the Netflix marketing mayhem.  However, we will take a shot at Facebook, which is supposed to be the giant of social networking.
     With little warning, Facebook suddenly changes their page, throwing thousands, if not millions, of users into frustration.  Since you're reading this blog, we'll assume that you are also familiar with Facebook, and what happened today.
     There are three cardinal rules in dealing with customers.  First, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.  Second, customers (with the exception of all the Apple fans out there) don't usually like big changes or change for the apparent sake of change.  Facebook managed to break both rules at once.
     Interestingly enough, they not only broke both rules, but they failed to communicate adequately with their customer base about what they were about to change, nor really ask their customers about it beforehand.  Which leads to the third cardinal rule in dealing with customers:  you are flattering yourself if you believe you are smarter than your customer.
     Way back in the dark ages of 1985, a little company called Coca-Cola decided it was smarter than its customer base.  They decided to *gasp* tamper with the taste of Coke.  The new concoction was called, oddly enough, New Coke.  Coca-Cola flattered itself by thinking it was smarter than its customers.   Guess what?  It wasn't.  You can read the story of this disaster here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7209828/ns/us_news/t/it-seemed-good-idea-time/#.TnooOHN9038

     So what was the crux of this failed and expensive experiment?  To quote from the article:

     Sam Craig, professor of marketing and international business at the Stern School of Business at New York University, pointed to what he and other industry observers have long considered a fatal mistake on Coca-Cola's part. “They didn't ask the critical question of Coke users: Do you want a new Coke? By failing to ask that critical question, they had to backpedal very quickly.”

      Since it's highly unlikely that any of the whiz kids at Facebook were even alive in 1985, should we cut them some slack for making the same mistake?  Or should we excorciate them for failing to do their homework?

     Be it social media, or business social media, the plain truth is - people get used to something first, then they use it.  

     If your business social media tweets or emails suddenly changed in a radical direction, say by adding popups to them, would people continue to read them?  I wouldn't.  I, like most people out there, detest popups in my email, or any changes to it that make it a) more difficult to use, or b) make me  take time out of my schedule to relearn something that, as pointed out above, wasn't broken to begin with.

     I'd be willing to bet the folks over at Facebook's new competitor Google Plus are laughing themselves silly right now.

     What do you think?