Do you have advice for Facebook?
I was reading Robert Scoble’s recent blog post entitled, “Dear Mark Zuckerberg“, in which he gives several pieces of advice for Facebook in lieu of their recent troubles.
He gives some good advice, including putting a 3rd party in charge of evaluating privacy policies for Facebook. I LOVE that one.
Personally my advice would be for Facebook to work hard to ensure that their users are comfortable with their direction and to be more clear about what they’re doing. Zuck isn’t the slickest of speakers, perhaps they need a smoother person explaining things. But keeping their users happy should be job #1. People love what Facebook provides and should only grow if they focus on keeping the users happy.
Tell me what advice YOU’D give Facebook.
As a developer, I'm less concerned about the privacy stuff than I am with their system actually WORKING. Normal users don't see what developers have to deal with behind the scenes, but it feels like FB is held together with spit, duct tape and a prayer.
My advice to Facebook? Get your sh*t together on your platform.
Ah, figured I'd get a Facebook developer to chime in ;)
Zuckerberg is not the best voice for Facebook. NPR's Melissa Block interviewed him yesterday for All Things Considered and the result was just painful (https://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2010…). He was trying to sound cordial and polite, but when Block pressed him a bit on why profiles aren't defaulted to private, his frustration was pretty obvious. And if he can't handle the soft approach of public radio, heaven help him when the next FB fiasco comes around and he has to make the rounds on Sunday's talking head shows.
By the way, the new privacy announcement (https://www.facebook.com/privacy/explanation.php) is much more involved than I expected. For something made supposedly simpler, that's a lot of explanation, particularly when you include Zuck's even longer blog post (https://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=39192232…). I'm thinking the average user is going to be in the same boat as before. They won't read it, they won't change their settings and nothing really changes.
Hmm. Now that I think about it, maybe Facebook needs just a really good content strategist.
my advice to him is to just ignore virtually all the people who are giving him advice except for the few people that are already part of his inner circle – sometimes greatness requires a singular vision and I think he has it