Feb 20 2009
Learning from Facebook’s Recent TOS Retraction
The social networking site Facebook recently scrambled to react to negative user feedback arising from recent changes to its term of service. The most telling lesson from this latest controversy is how quickly Facebook has responded to user concerns and how welcome this response has been to the aggrieved users, privacy advocates and the media.
Every emailer gets some complaint feedback from recipients, often routed through direct ISP ‘feedback loops’ where users press the ‘spam’ or ‘junk’ button. While studies have shown that a portion of this feedback may be ‘false positive’ mistakes, the substantial majority are clearly negative feedback from aggrieved users. Unfortunately, few email marketers closely track these complaint percentages or use this data to quickly respond to trends/spikes in complaints.
The message here is simple; every email marketer can quickly respond to increases in complaint feedback. The reasons for complaint increases are usually very clear, and often tied to subscriber acquisition practices. Email is the greatest testing vehicle ever created, and complaint reduction can be tested along the same lines as subject lines. However, if the complaint reasons or testing processes don’t seem clear, then comment here and I’d be happy to point you in the right direction.
It took 64,000 complaints for Facebook to pay heed to their users. After doing so, their users are now further endeared to them. How much negative feedback do you need to before you re-examine your privacy practices?
