This is Mark Zuckerberg, I’m listening

Facebook is the very tool that has allowed marketers, brands, CEOs, managers etc to talk and listen organically to customers…so shouldn’t it be listening too? And reacting sooner rather than later.

Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to take on the views of his users yesterday was well received, but it is one in a long string of changes and re-changes by the young CEO. But has it really damaged the social network…or perhaps made it more popular?

Let’s face it, Facebook’s numbers have only ever grown, despite a number of gaffes. 

Since its start, Facebook has be broiled in many a privacy debate, many an investigation and many a backlash. But it’s always stood up for itself…not apologised, stood up.

Think of Facebook as a country (after all, Zuckerberg regularly reminds us that Facebook’s user base is actually bigger than the population of the US). Zuckerberg is the Prime Minister…or the President.

Not everything he does is well received, and being a democracy (as it seems to be, freedom of speech and all that) civilians are allowed to voice their concern, protest and revolt.

With that many users, like a country with vast amounts of people, there are always bound to be some that aren’t going to be catered for the way they should. But the government, and Zuckerberg, can never please everyone. Why? Then we’d have world peace and secretly no body actually wants that. We love to revel in chaos and calamity, it what makes life interesting and why shows like Neighbours remain popular across several continents for decades.

There doesn’t seem to be a week go by when Facebook and its fearless (sometime naïve) leader are not making headlines. Maybe Facebook wants it that way…perhaps they’re using PR tactics similar to that of Apple…stealth tactic, marketing to us, encouraging us and we don’t even know that they’re mostly not just the catalyst. 

In Facebook listening to its users’ concerns over privacy and then acting upon it, it is sending out the message similar to what Frasier Krane “we’re listening”.

And perhaps that was the intent all along…to restore consumer confidence as a government would. Create a problem in the public eye, fix it, win confidence. It’s an easy formula…perhaps a little cynical of me but you can ignore the fact that it’s slightly usually for a company that is yet to make a profit give up the chance to please its consumers. Can you think of any government or corporate who’d do the same?

There’s more to this story than meets the eye and sooner or later, it’ll be in the headlines again.