facebook just became a fake friend, and what we can all learn from their mistake
Every now and again someone just gets it right. They deliver a product or service so good that it not only makes life easier, it brings value that you didn’t have before. Snapchat did this with their time restricted photos. By offering a product that previously didn’t exist and playing to their strength they were able to build Snapchat a big audience, and while they may have grabbed attention for enabling discrete sexting there was a lot more to love. A few days ago facebook introduced time restricted photos to their Messenger app and called it “Messenger Day”. Let’s take a step back for a moment and remember that facebook owns Instagram, who themselves made no secret about copying Snapchat’s “Stories” feature not too long ago. When I spoke with some friends about facebook’s “new” Messenger feature their response was very negative, and most of them felt that facebook was doing nothing more than copying Snapchat and doing a bad job of it.
Facebook just demonstrated how you can be really great at one thing, but in a single action undo a lot of the good that you’ve achieved over a long period of time. Since it’s inception facebook has been great at providing people all around the world, a platform to communicate and share their lives with each other. There is no need for facebook to try and be something that it’s not, when it’s already the best at what it does. Facebook’s change to Messenger made me immediately draw a parallel to that friend we all have, that desperately wants to be something that they’re not just to get others to like them. What our friend fails to realise it that they don’t need to change to be loved or liked, they’re already important and valuable to their friends. While it’s great that our friend wants to explore new sides to their personality and meet some new and interesting people, they don’t need to pretend to be someone or something that they’re not in order to do so.
The lesson here is two fold. Spend some time understanding and appreciating what your strengths are. You have knowledge, skills or a spirit that others don’t. Once you know what that is you should embrace it, use it and most importantly keep building on it. Facebook has an opportunity to accept that some people don’t like it’s copycat addition to Messenger, and offer an alternative so that it’s users don’t have to have their valuable screen real estate taken up by something they never use or don’t like. You also have an opportunity, each and every day, to focus on what you’re great at and what makes you who you are. Play to your strengths and explore new options, but never risk changing who you are just to please someone else.
Brett Stone is the co-founder and director of The Crucial Team Australia Pty Ltd. You can find more about Brett and The Crucial Team at www.thecrucialteam.com
