Survey: For Facebook, Critical Mass Doesn’t Equal Satisfaction
July 21, 2011 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
Facebook is a social networking behemoth, with 750 million active users who spend about 700 billion minutes per month on the site. In a sector where users’ ability to connect and share with friends is crucial to success, critical mass equals power, and Facebook has that in spades.
But just because users are active doesn’t mean they are entirely happy with the service. In a newly released satisfaction survey of online news, search and social media sites, Facebook garnered the lowest overall score — 66%. The annual American Customer Satisfaction Index (ASCI) e-business report was conducted in partnership with market research firm ForeSee Results.
Facebook’s satisfaction score was up three percentage points over 2010, but came out last in the social media category and last in the e-business sector overall. And the survey’s organizers suggest that the results show that the company might be vulnerable to competitors — namely to a push by Google to promote its new Google+ social networking service, which was introduced after the survey was conducted. “We don’t know yet how Google+ will fare, but what we do know is that Google is one of the highest-scoring companies in the ACSI, and Facebook is one of the lowest,” ForeSee Results CEO Larry Freed said in a news release. “An existing dominance of market share … is no longer a safety net for a company that is not providing superior customer service.”
Indeed, in a 2010 Knowledge@Wharton story about the introduction of, and privacy concerns related to, the Facebook Connect service — which links users to other parts of the web by sharing their “likes” and other activities across a number of different sites — Wharton legal studies and business ethics professor Andrea Matwyshyn warned that “people stay with Facebook because they feel locked in, but they may lose trust over time. It could be an ideal time for a competitor to come in and harness that trust deficit.”
With Google+, the search company (which received an 83% satisfaction score in the ASCI, topping its category) is attempting to address some of the most-talked about user frustrations with Facebook — privacy and contacts management. For example, the new service allows users to group friends into different “circles” and to choose which information and updates are shared with each one.
In a KnowledgeToday post about Google+, Wharton marketing professor David Reibstein said that Facebook “ought to be able to very easily respond” to the Google+ “circle” feature, if not others. “The question is how sustainable is any advantage coming out of Google+, which means something not easily replicable.” Facebook has already introduced a video calling service in partnership with Skype in response to the Google+ “hangout” application, which allows for multi-user video chats.
It will be a year before we know how Google+ fares in the ASCI, but this year’s report included one other notable result in the social media category: Once-hot MySpace, which had the lowest satisfaction score in 2010 (63%), was dropped this year because there were not enough users to create a statistically significant sample. The ASCI is compiled with data from interviews with approximately 70,000 consumers annually.
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Google +’s Recent Surge Makes it a Worthy Foe for Facebook
July 21, 2011 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
google + is Google’s newest attempt at creating a social network, and this time they are gunning for the biggest socialite of them all, Facebook. The Internet behemoth has learned a few valuable lessons from their previous attempts (Buzz and Wave), and now look to change their conception of social networking, breaking away from the “friend-accumulation” that has become social interaction, in favor of something more natural that pays homage to how we already think of our friends. Google does this through the use of their new clique system “Circles”, which allows users more control in broadcasting their information, giving them the ability to share information with select groups while keeping it private from others. While this is certainly a radical change to the already tried and true method instilled by social networking giants MySpace and Facebook, the formula seems to be working, as recent statistical information estimates that the site already has 18 million registered users. This is no small feat for a service that is only three weeks old and still in its limited field trial.
Google +’s instant success is no fluke; the site’s recent surge in attention is a direct result of their ability to address the preexisting problems that exist with inter-web social networking. Social networking has come a long way, irrevocably changing the way that we socialize, but there still remains one problem … the way we share information on the web is clunky and unnatural. While we are given the ability to instantly share information with one another, our ability to control that information is limited. Google addresses this stating:
Google looks to achieve this goal with a host of new functions that will help revolutionize social networking. Besides the impressive addition of “Circles”, Google + also looks to introduce “Sparks” and “Hangouts”. Sparks is a new function that allows people to converse together over common interests and subjects. From what Google is describing about this function it sounds like Facebook Groups on steroids, allowing the users a sense of fluidity as interests are imported to (select) circles of friends and constantly updated via their feed. Hangouts on the other hand aims to create a more natural means of video communication. Google feels that other video conference methods are messy; Google reiterates
Thus Google created Hangouts where users can instantly meet up with different friends from a particular circle. By entering the “hangout” users will be immediately placed in a video conference with all other friends from this circle that have also decided to enter the hangout. This new system removes the hassle awkwardness of having to constantly call and import friends in video chats to talk. This new natural and controlled system could prove to be a possible rival for the popular video conference application Skype.
Google + certainly has a lot to offer, introducing and capitalizing on new advancements that could help change the way we think about online social networking. The question remains however, will these new additions be enough to persuade people to leave Facebook? While Facebook may not have as many bells and whistles as Google +, it still maintains that sense of familiarity. We are comfortable with Facebook and all are friends are already there. So do we really want to take the risk of leaving behind our established social network in hopes of a better one?
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