Facebook is a classic example of two things: how word of mouth marketing can drive huge amounts of adoption to your product, and how failure to respect the basic values of your customers can ruin your product.
There is no question that word of mouth has done great things for Facebook’s adoption and in turn its value. People have loved the application for allowing them to do a very simple thing: talk about themselves, keep in touch with friends, and make new friends. I daresay that items 1) and 3) there are the key driver of any social app; people want to talk about themselves, and people want to think that what they say about themselves is so interesting that people can’t wait to be friends with them. It feeds all of our inner egos and/or self-esteem. Their original target market is teenagers, who are, as we all know (particularly parents out there), all about trying to identify who they are and wanting acceptance from peers.
That same word of mouth recently bit Facebook. Their Beacon program’s online tracking showed a gross misunderstanding of their customers by violating several important tenets:
1) Users in today’s internet are nervous about privacy
2) As any parent knows, teenagers (one of Facebook’s major markets) are really paranoid about their privacy
3) The way that Beacon worked, sooner or later it was going to show up as spyware in any number of security apps- and people were going to block the service anyway, and then they were going to fear Facebook as a result (my security software told me it was bad!)
Facebook broke an even bigger rule with this program, however: at some point, they stopped thinking about their customers as people, and started thinking of them as sources of information. Many companies have done this. You know of a way to get information from your data sources, and you decide on a new feature or revenue source that you can generate from that information. Too often in this situation, companies think of revenue rather than the customers. Facebook did this when they decided to make people’s purchases public for the world to see without the ability for the customer to approve or edit the feed.
I am all about revenues and making money from customers. That’s what free enterprise is all about. Still, you must always remember what your customer’s core values are. Evaluate them. Write them down. Put them on your wall. Violate their core values, and not only will they abandon you, they will rebel. Word of Mouth is the number one advertising method out there. Don’t turn it against you.
