Facebook has instituted a number of changes of late with regards to integration with other sites, much to the chagrin of some users. The Open Graph has led to a public backlash, most notably from technology bloggers, and it’s caught the attention of Facebook.
“The scope of the conversation has been much wider than I would have expected,” said Facebook executive Bret Taylor. “It’s been a really valuable experience for us internally, what experiences people like and what causes discomfort.”
This event, however, isn’t new in fact, this sort of user backlash has become almost cyclical for Facebook. Taylor said that the social network site has done a poor job of communicating with its 400 million users over the recent changes and says they are listening to feedback.
“We’re currently evaluating the best way to respond to the concerns,” said Taylor. “And changing things is on the table.”
As for the vicious cycle of make changes, trigger backlash, make retroactive changes and apologizing, Taylor said, “That’s something we’ve talked a lot about, given what’s happened. Hopefully, coming out of it, we’ll learn a better process for launching these things.”
This last round has been particularly nasty, with privacy concerns voiced by tech bloggers leading to mainstream media coverage. While Facebook says that 10 million users have signed up for accounts since the changes were announced, they won’t say how many have deleted accounts, only saying that the issue doesn’t seem to disturb their user base at large.
“But we take this really seriously,” he said. “These are our colleagues who we have a lot respect for.”
Encouragingly, Facebook is open to suggestions that make privacy settings easier to work with and deleting and suspending accounts less roundabout. “The simplicity theme is dominating our internal discussions, said Taylor. Having lots of knobs and dials gives people more control. But it doesn’t make it simple.”
Source: Mercury News
