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Slow rollout is a great tool for suppressing dissent (and discontent). You likely remember that people were upset en masse with design changes of Facebook. How
by NotOscarWilde 13y ago
Slow rollout is a great tool for suppressing dissent (and discontent).
You likely remember that people were upset en masse with design changes of Facebook. However, if you get a new style change and none of your friends have it, your venting comment either gets lost or you won't write one at all, seeing as nobody else complains. Then a second person gets the style change and again, seeing no complaints himself, he is much more likely not to complain.
I'm surprised this topic (complaint control through trickery) isn't addresssed as often.
- _mulder_ 13y agoThis is an interesting concept. Are there any relevant studies/articles of this in practice, beyond the Anecdotal?
- NotOscarWilde 13y agoSo far it's been just a theory of mine. An interesting observation is that Facebook can easily deny this concept saying that "slow rollout can prevent excessive server stress", which is without a doubt true. It seems to me that it is hard to test whether the random rollout just aims at preventing server crashes or it has behavioural connotations as well.
- WalterSear 13y agoI doubt that. A slow roll out does allow you to catch the inevitable 1.0 bugs before too much damage is done.
- ddrmaxgt37 13y agoYup. It can catch bugs. It also allows them to catch drops in numbers and other problems. This is the main reason that the 2013 newsfeed design never made it to anyone else. Also, at least in the past, FB used to roll out redesigns to groups that were relatively isolated from the rest of the graph like New Zealand.