Changes are always bad but good

A community always belongs to the members, at least in their hearts. A community always consists of and exists thanks to the members, so partly they are right of course. But in the end there is always someone who wants there to be some big profit too, and those are seldom part of the community.

All this is important to remember when changing anything at all in a community. The members know this and so must the company. The members see every little change and put the puzzle together of what the company is up to, and the big buzz is always – ‘are they doing this change for us, or for their own economical profits?’. They know so well that the company must improve the condition for ad impressions, user sales, page views etc, and they accept that. But in return they own the product. They require to have a word in the changes, if the colors are right, the stylings, the copy, the details in the features. And if they don’t - the changes are no good. The savvy member would have done it differently.

At the same time all changes always push the already member activity to maximum for a couple of weeks. They try it, test it, discuss it, hate it and after a month they know it as their own and wait for the next change. Hopefully they will be asked for their opinion in advance the next time. In the end, it’s at least they who are going to use it, so it is not more than right.



How many revamp does stardoll have to do? It’s just getting tiring now . .

But I suppose Stardoll have to do anything to get more members with more advertisements and updates. It looks nice but what were they thinking dressing up those horrible dolls? There’s a punk/emo girl, which just looks wrong. A tart who should really be given a lesson in pairing accessories with clothes. A Robert Pattinson look -a-like, which will probably get a few Twilight fan-girls joining up. All of the dolls just look like they’ve stepped into a wardrobe half blind .They could have least put make-up on the dolls to give it an edge. I preferred the dolls on the old front page, they could have just used the same dolls with a different layout.

If you run a competition for paying members to enter dress up styles for the upcoming startpage you offer a payment trigger, an event and a more 'fair' selection of styles, a selection made by the members.


Also read more about changes in Christopher S. Penn's post here qoated 'The perceived pain of change, of doing something new, of trying something new, is usually much greater than the perceived pain of staying as is, of keeping the status quo.' The most impossible navigation ever is now the one you know and you don't know the next one. Again, let the member own the change to accept it.