Connection lost, for now

#FacebookFail by Profero Global

Having recently written a post on the success of the Facebook Connect API (see “Facebook Finally Connects”) there is some irony in that the unstoppable, social media blue machine have wrongly second-guessed the needs of their audience with the introduction of their new “Reconnect” feature. And let’s face it, they rarely get things wrong.

The feature itself helps individuals to reconnect with past links they may have lost contact with, similar to the current “suggest a friend” tool. On the surface this new feature looks like one more innovative addition to the Facebook platform, however they failed to recognise and/or predict that lost connections are not simply accidental phenomena but can be rational decisions. Given the current convenience and ease of contacting people on the current (perfectly fine) platform, it seems strange for the Facebook team, with all their genius and expertise, to commit such a schoolboy error.

The manner in which the criticism is being documented only adds to the sense of irony, having not only been widely covered by various high profile blogs such as Mashable and co. but also the networks main rival and the public’s popular weapon of choice, Twitter. With the inevitable “#fail” pitchforks having surfaced alongside Twiterers spreading rumour that the “Reconnect” feature is merely a piece of Halloween PR, this is adding insult to injury.

Examples (See below) of the calamity include both Facebook users and Tweople complaining about being reconnected with: ex-partners/friends/close ones whom have passed away and various other rather painful connections that, on balance, should remain dormant.

Reconnect by Profero Global

Although this is a lesson learned for Facebook, it might possibly end up being an even greater one for Twitter engineers, given the absence of a friend/fan suggestion tool on their own platform. One of the easiest ways to alienate people, if the trending topics are to be believed, is for social networks to attempt to control or influence relationships. To do so seems to be to self-destruct. People flock to spaces in which they feel comfortable, with so why change it? The beauty of both Facebook and Twitter is their simplicity, most notably on the latter, while the fundamental attraction of the social networking landscape is, broadly, having the power to control relationships independently. If Twitter can learn from Facebook’s mistakes then they will only go from strength to strength, especially on the back of their recent Google/Bing collaboration success.

The idea of never losing a connection again is a nice one, in theory, but in reality we can’t be friends with everybody forever, even if Facebook say we can…