Facebook (B)

Facebook, a social networking website founded by Mark Zuckerberg, initially targeted the college demographic. Once openned to the general population, the site grew rapidly. In September 2006, Facebook added two features that triggered strong negative reactions from its users—News Feeds and Mini Feeds. Then, about a year later, Facebook launched a new platform that allowed outside developers to build applications that would run inside of Facebook’s pages. Instead of restricting users to Facebook’s applications, users could add and remove any application created by an independent developer as well. This case discusses how Facebook managed the overwhelming negative response to its two features and why it adopted a strategy of outside applications.