One of the reasons competition is good is that it forces companies to make adjustments based on what the other players in their space are doing. Until the advent of Google Plus Facebook hadn't had any real competition since MySpace crashed and burned. Lack of competition is a lot of business people's fantasy but it's lousy for the consumer in the short to mid term and lousy for companies as well if it goes on for too long. It's easy to get arrogant and foolish in your decision making when there is nobody to chase or outrun in the competitive landscape. Eventually you become fat and lazy and somebody else comes along and takes a big chunk of your pie before you can react.
Facebook has made a number of enhancements to their platform over the past few weeks that are in obvious reaction to Google Plus. As an added bonus Facebook actually made these changes obvious to users and prompted them for their preference. Progress!
I don't know if Google plus will succeed but in the short term it has at least encouraged Facebook to take a smarter and more customer friendly approach to how they do business and that's a good thing for everyone.
Image by ACE Foundation via Flickr
No comments:
Post a Comment