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Mark Zuckerberg on the new facebook backlash

By Andrew Redfern @ 19th September 2008 10:32 am

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has written a blog post commenting on the backlash over user complaints about Facebook’s new format.

There is a large body of opposition to the change with various groups popping up demanding an option to allow users to continue using the old format. Earlier this week our news feed happened to include the phrase “How to get the old facebook” (Google Trends) and that search phrase made up a sizable percentage of our traffic for that day.

In the post Zuckerberg says “After months of hard work, we’re at a point where almost all 100 million people around the world on Facebook are using the new design. As we continue to roll this out, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on what we’ve built and why I think it’s an important step for us.

Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. In the last four years, we’ve built new products that help people share more, such as photos, videos, groups, events, Wall posts, status updates and so on.

As people share more, sometimes we need to change the site to accommodate how much information people are posting. Back in 2006 we launched News Feed, which brought all of the most recent and interesting activity from the people you care about right to your home page. Similarly, the new Facebook design replaces all the big boxes on profiles and brings all of your friends’ most recent and interesting activity to front and center.”

But then goes on to say “We realize that change can be difficult though. Many people disliked News Feed at first because it changed their home page and how they shared information. Now it’s one of the most important parts of Facebook. We think the new design can have the same effect.

With this release, we’ve worked harder to get more feedback about what we can improve. Starting in March, we created a Page where we gave updates on the changes we were considering and more than 150,000 people joined and participated”. Despite the positive noise he admits that around a quarter of the users who’d tried the new design had immediately reverted to the old system but says that supporting both designs just wasn’t feasible.

The new Facebook will be a work in progress for some time but it’s clear that a significant slice of it user base are averse to the change, literally millions of people are signing up to the anti-change groups. Whether users vote with their feet remains to be seen.

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