Why Listening in Social Media Matters
May 15th, 2009Author: Erica Chandler
What is it with social networking tools deciding to make changes without the consent or opinion of their user base? Facebook has done it a number of times, once when they introduced the news feed and then again with the most recent redesign.
Now, Twitter is the latest of the social media tools to fall prey to its users.
Earlier this week, #fixreplies became a top trending topic on Twitter, thanks to the latest “update” to the service where Twitter has stopped automatically displaying “@ replies “directed to people you don’t follow. Previously, Twitter users had the ability to choose one of two settings:
1) Turn on “@ replies” from members the user follows directed to members whom the user doesn’t follow
2) To turn those “tweets” off (since they may not be of relevance to them personally)
To Twitter, this was merely an update to its “settings,” but to its users it was removing a capability that some viewed as a way to find other “Twitterers” that they might be interested in following. By doing this, it stopped a method of communication between its users. This is something you never want to do as a communication tool so of course, there was a bit of backlash from users.
So, what did Twitter do? It listened to its users and took the feedback to heart. While at first its communication may have been a bit unclear, it has since made up for it.
Here’s the latest on the whole thing – a post from Twitter’s company blog apologizing and explaining it all from start to finish and how they reacted along the way. Twitter was transparent with their communication, stating where they may have made a mistake and what issues were resolved. A necessary and excellent move, in my opinion – and likely also the rest of the community’s.
And for those of you that don’t have time to read through the entire post, here’s a key take away from the post:
“We’re still listening, reading tweets, gathering feedback, and working on more efficient ways of doing so. Thanks to everyone for the feedback and for using Twitter.”
How can companies prevent this moving forward? Is it always going to be trial and error? Is this type of strategy to be expected? Mashable.com writes about preventative measures that can be taken to avoid user backlash here.
Companies need to be proactive BEFORE the changes occur. They should also be proactive about getting feedback ahead of time by utilizing testers or something like a focus group. Odds are, the responses you get ahead of time will give you insight into what you will be in store for once the changes take place. This also gives you the opportunity to stop a problem before it has a chance to bubble up into something much bigger.
Overall, there seems to be no permanent repercussion from the trial, error and apologize method, but will it stay that way forever? It’s likely. I know that if these companies continue to be transparent and let me know they are listening – I’ll keep coming back for more.
Let us know what you think.
Also, here are some additional thoughts on the issue from the community:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10239517-36.html?tag=mncol;txt
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10240163-36.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=TheSocial
http://mashable.com/2009/05/14/twitter-screwed-up/
