The response of facebook changing their interface and business model yesterday was quick and viral. A lot of the users have been very vocal and against the changes that have been made.
Of course this isn't too much to be concerned with as it is always the ones against something that make disproportionate amount of noise about it.
There have been a lot of little communities popping up all over the web, as Jordan Running mentions. Groups like "Students Against the Facebook News Feed," "Students for Facebook Privacy," "I Hate the New Facebook," and even "Ruchi Sanghvi, Creator of the news feed, is an idiot."
In response Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted on the Facebook blog; calling the post 'Calm down. Breathe. We hear you.'
In the post he said, "We think they are great products, but we know that many of you are not immediate fans, and have found them overwhelming and cluttered.
He ended the post by saying, "We’re going to continue to improve Facebook, and we want you to be part of that process. Test out the products and continue to provide us feedback. Use your privacy settings so you can feel most comfortable using the site."
His response was quick; he discussed the reasoning behind the changes and explained that privacy settings were still in place to protect the users. He did all he could at this time in response to the concerns.
This should be a good situation to follow and a case study in how to handle customers while making changes.
The only question that comes to me is if they did in-depth market research and responded to that research, or only threw this upon their users without checking things out first. It seems that everyone was so caught off guard, and caught them by surprise, which initiated the response. That is seems to be the biggest mistake in this whole episode.
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