If you’re active on social networking sites like Orkut, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the likes you will be familiar with mails of following type:
abc has added you to his trusted circle... ABC is now following you on twitter!
XYZ has approved your friend request
123@gmail.com has confirmed his/her subscription to your blog
So and so wishes to connect you through LinkedIn
Whenever someone shows interest in you by some means (friendship request, subscription to blogs, following on twitter, fans and ACs and so on) corresponding social networking sites promptly inform you about the same via mail. But almost all sites do not care to inform you of a lost contact. That is, if someone stops following you on twitter or terminates friendship with you on orkut or chooses to end his subscription to your blog, you usually do not get an alert. (Feedblitz is an exception)
Why so? Why are the sites hiding negative aspects? It’s very crucial for me to know if some people have chosen to discontinue their subscription to my blog or stop following me on twitter or have decided to remove me from their list of friends. Exit interviews are very important and it is very critical to understand why I lost a customer (or a friend or a fan or a reader, as the case may be) It is very difficult to keep a track of it manually. Social networking sites and utilities should have a provision to conduct kind of simple exit interview (like asking the reason why you’ve opted to discontinue) and promptly pass the feedback to the user. If I get an update for what reason a particular person took that decision I can introspect and analyze where I can improve. If the move was due to my fault I can extend an apology and make efforts to ensure that such things won’t repeat. If networking sites don’t facilitate this side of the coin their service remains incomplete.
Do you agree?
