Rapid and Creative Innovation

One of the most innovative communication channels, Facebook, not only connects millions of people around the world, but it is rapidly updated to display changes nearly every time users sign on. The phenomenon that is Facebook is one that cannot afford to be static in terms of service and its capabilities. Rather, the updates on the website are constantly offering new benefits to satisfy the networking desires of the current users, yet straightforward enough to enable new users to navigate the website.

The underlying structure of the networking site enables users to create profiles and connect with other users without a lengthy instruction manual. This underlying structure that is easily navigated is a creative novelty that has proven to offer a framework that supports the millions of new features and applications that have been added since its institution.

The site updates almost continuously and the Facebook Platform that CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in 2007, gives programmers an avenue to build applications to enhance the site according to their unique interests and hobbies. Today, there are at least 800,000 developers worldwide that create applications for Facebook. The creative outlet that Facebook provides not only allows individual users to constantly add personal flare through uploading pictures, videos, web links, and music choices to name a few, but it allows developers to create applications on their own according to their personal interests.

In fact, the technology and capabilities of the current internet industry have enabled this website to boom and become a global entity in just five years. Facebook was created from the dorm room of Mark Zuckerberg to function as a directory of students, faculty, and staff for Harvard University. In just a few months, Facebook had been spread to almost forty-five schools and thousands of people were using it.

The speed at which Facebook can implement new ideas and features on the site is so rapid because of modern technology and website capability. This website is an unmistakable example of real-time consumer feedback. It is true that companies have found new ways to receive customer feedback on innovations and new offerings at increasingly higher speeds. In the case of Facebook, user response is virtually instant because users voice their opinions, findings and reactions to the site changes through creating movement groups on the Facebook site itself or through notes, status updates, or messages they post publicly on the site. As the article, “The New, Faster Face of Innovation,” states, new offerings have a better chance for success because companies have greater insight into how their customers behave and what they want. The price of failure is very low for sites such as Facebook because just as fast as they can implement new offerings or site changes, they can revert back to the outlay that users enjoyed before just as quickly.

For Facebook, traditional methods of research and development are not even worth considering because of the technology capabilities of the website. In much the same way that managers will have to shift to allowing lower-level employees implement experimentation and development practices in order to keep up with the rapid speed and demand of innovation, the framework of Facebook allows thousands of users to create their own innovative applications that increase the product offering of the site continuously.

Additionally, the template and “face” of Facebook is always changing on the channels where Facebook can be accessed as well. The size of the font and the amount of the web screen displayed on the iPhone screen is often experimentally changed and designed. I don’t personally have an iPhone, but I have heard from iPhone users about the changes that show up frequently, making the website easier to use on the iPhone screen. The same is probably true for other mobile web devices or phones.

In my experience with Facebook, I have seen it become an increasingly more creative website that has enabled users to express personal interests and hobbies through new applications and channels. I believe that if Facebook was not constantly changing, it could quickly seem old and mundane to a society that expects instant change and quick technology that reflects peoples’ needs and interests. The people who use Facebook essentially control the website as I have seen countless protest groups form to voice feedback on site changes followed by website changes. As a Facebook user, it has been fun to see the site grow and develop into something truly user controlled and phenomenally innovative.