500 million users can’t all be dissatisfied, right?
July 20, 2010 by Valerie HelmbreckPosted in: Communication, Facebook, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, Search engines, User behavior, Web 2.0, Web sites, adoption, social networking
Facebook’s expected to announce its 500 millionth user soon, but the news is likely to be overshadowed by a recent survey that found its current users are terribly dissatisfied with the site.
While it might be the most popular U.S. website, consumers are saying they don’t much like the social networking giant, according to the 2010 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) E-Business Report (it’s free for download).
Facebook grade: 64% on ACSI’s 100-point scale. At most schools, that would be a low D or D-.
This lousy score put satisfaction with the site below that of the ever-unpopular IRS. It places Facebook in the bottom 5% of all measured private sector companies and in the same range as airlines and cable companies, two perennially low-scoring industries with terrible customer satisfaction.
Of course, customer dissatisfaction doesn’t mean a company or organization doesn’t make boatloads of money off its business. Airlines and cable companies prove that.
Even the IRS rakes in plenty of cash despite its unpopularity. (Being able to threaten jail time might have something to do with that, however.)
Social media websites are measured for the first time by ACSI, which took a look at Facebook, MySpace, Wikipedia and YouTube. Twitter wasn’t included in the category because many of its users access it through third-party apps other than Twitter.com.
Wikipedia leads the category at 77, followed by YouTube at 73, Facebook at 64 and MySpace at 63.
In the search engine category, there was also some surprising news about the ever-popular Google. The site Google plunged 7% this year. Still, it continues to lead the portals and search engines industry with a score of 80.
It’s also just the second time that Google hasn’t held the top spot, as the “all others” category of search engine competitors jumped 5% to 82. Microsoft’s Bing search engine makes a strong first showing with a score of 77, trailed by Yahoo! (76), AOL (74), and Ask.com (73).
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Tags: ACSI, American Customer Satisfaction Index, consumers, E-Business Report, Facebook, popularity
July 20th, 2010 at 12:23 pm
Valerie, you’re story doesn’t say why users are dissatisfied with Facebook. I’ll definitely be downloading the report as I’m really curious as to the reasons. Thanks for making it available, and thanks for the whack at cable companies, airlines, and the IRS. It gave me a great smile for the day!