Facebook's Loyalty Test
Facebook is ubiquitous. It's after all 'the' only social network that matters big. The virtual umbilical cord that connects us to our families and friends. A growing social e-commerce-cum-digital media empire that's your news source, your communication hub, your work's intranet, and also possibly the one app alongside YouTube, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp (the latter three all owned by Facebook) to dominate the time we spend on our mobile devices. Hence you would be given to thinking that for all the massive monopoly it enjoys, it would do anything and everything in its power to retain its user base, to keep them 'addictively' hooked to it as much as possible. Except as it interestingly turns out, it is not.
If latest reports from The Information (paywall) are anything to go by, the social network has been busy, charting plan-B options in the event of an Android doomsday. Facebook and Google are not rivals in the strictest sense, though both companies have steadily expanded into similar territories previously uncharted by them - virtual reality, artificial intelligence, affordable internet services through balloons and drones, and whatnot. Furthermore, Google's several attempts at a direct, sustainable Facebook rival is yet to bear fruition - it recently revamped Google+ into an interest network a la Pinterest. Still the world's largest social network, true to its mantra "[i]f we don't create the thing that kills Facebook, someone else will", is ever ready, in case Google shows it the door.
Thus as part of the contingency plans to continue operating on Android, Facebook ran a test on a small fraction of users wherein it took the app off Android Play Store and instead provided an external download link in an attempt to gauge audience reaction. The result wasn't "disastrous", Information's Amir Efrati wrote, adding Facebook went to the extent of crashing its Android app for hours together to test their loyalty. "Facebook has tested the loyalty and patience of Android users by secretly introducing artificial errors that would automatically crash the app for hours at a time." But "people never stopped coming back," and defaulted to the mobile browser version of the social network, rather than give up on Facebook entirely, Efrati further noted.
Not long ago, Facebook sparked outcry when a study revealed that it played with user emotions, but this sort of a testing shows that the social network is dead serious about competition and that it would do anything and everything in its power to reach its users, even at the risk of alienating them by disrupting access to its own service, when ironically it promises to be the one platform for people across the world to share, connect and express their ideas, and let their family and friends know they are safe (via Safety Check) should there have occurred a natural/man-made disaster. Is this the price Facebook users have to pay for their loyalty?
If latest reports from The Information (paywall) are anything to go by, the social network has been busy, charting plan-B options in the event of an Android doomsday. Facebook and Google are not rivals in the strictest sense, though both companies have steadily expanded into similar territories previously uncharted by them - virtual reality, artificial intelligence, affordable internet services through balloons and drones, and whatnot. Furthermore, Google's several attempts at a direct, sustainable Facebook rival is yet to bear fruition - it recently revamped Google+ into an interest network a la Pinterest. Still the world's largest social network, true to its mantra "[i]f we don't create the thing that kills Facebook, someone else will", is ever ready, in case Google shows it the door.
Thus as part of the contingency plans to continue operating on Android, Facebook ran a test on a small fraction of users wherein it took the app off Android Play Store and instead provided an external download link in an attempt to gauge audience reaction. The result wasn't "disastrous", Information's Amir Efrati wrote, adding Facebook went to the extent of crashing its Android app for hours together to test their loyalty. "Facebook has tested the loyalty and patience of Android users by secretly introducing artificial errors that would automatically crash the app for hours at a time." But "people never stopped coming back," and defaulted to the mobile browser version of the social network, rather than give up on Facebook entirely, Efrati further noted.
Not long ago, Facebook sparked outcry when a study revealed that it played with user emotions, but this sort of a testing shows that the social network is dead serious about competition and that it would do anything and everything in its power to reach its users, even at the risk of alienating them by disrupting access to its own service, when ironically it promises to be the one platform for people across the world to share, connect and express their ideas, and let their family and friends know they are safe (via Safety Check) should there have occurred a natural/man-made disaster. Is this the price Facebook users have to pay for their loyalty?
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