My dad used to tell me that he liked having lots of customer because, chances are, they wouldn’t all fire him on the same day. But what if that weren’t true?
All this talk of being trapped in consumer - brand relationships got me to thinking. What would the big brands do if suddenly all of their customers figured out that that they actually ARE important. That they really HAVE power (and choices) and the don’t have to REMAIN Trapped. Well, here’s in interesting example of such customer englightenment from the social network circles. Apparently, some of the members of Facebook don’t like a new feature that was recently added to the site. In fact, they’re organizing protests against it!
Here’s an excerpt from a story on paidcontent.org
One anti-feed Facebook group - Students against Facebook News Feed - has more than 500,000 members already, a hefty number for a network with 9 million subscribers. The result is a glaring spotlight on the flaws of social media as a revenue stream. Not a happy place for a company that just raised $25 million in funding.
One of our readers (Gertrude) picked up on this in a comment on our earlier post: “This big mistake just told any potential acquirer that Facebook (or any social network for that matter), no matter how apparently dominant, is not entrenched enough to be immune from a mass migration. It also shows that the community is in control. Facebook might own the site, but it’s the users that are really in the driver’s seat. So any ideas Facebook or an acquirer get about what needs to be done to the site to ‘improve’ or monetize it may not be viable options in the real world.”
I say we all get together and quit all the brands that we love to hate. Who’s with me?!
