Facebook garnered the lowest satisfaction score of any Web site measured in an annual e-business survey, according to data released today.
In fact, Facebook ranks in the bottom 6% of the entire American Customer Satisfaction Index -- categories that also include airlines, cable companies and newspapers.
"Only 14 other sites of the 226 private-sector companies measured by the ACSI have scores that tie or fall below Facebook's," the ACSI report concludes.
If there's any good news for Facebook, it's that it boosted its satisfaction score from last year's 64 to 66. However, that's still below the 70 aggregate for all social media sites (chart below) and far less than leaders Wikipedia (78) and Google's YouTube (74).
No, this doesn't assure that challenger Google+ will supplant Facebook. But those who assume Facebook is immune to competition due to its massive user base may want to re-examine that idea.
Large market share is an asset, but it's not a synonym for invulnerable. Minicomputers once had large market share. Palm was once one of several companies that dominated the smartphone market. And MySpace used to be a major social media network, but doesn't even appear in this year's survey because there weren't enough responses.
Twitter.com data isn't broken out in the ACSI survey, because so many people tweet via third-party clients and not the Web site, so I can't see how it stacks up with would-be competitors. And, the survey took place several weeks before Google+ was launched, so it's too early to know how it measures in user satisfaction in the social media space. Google+ will likely be included next year, said Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results, a sponsor of the e-commerce ACSI surveys.
Google did score extremely well in the search engine/portal category. Google's search engine satisfaction score rose from 80 last year to 83 this year, making it the category leader. Potential bad news for Google? Bing increased from 77 to 82, the report notes:
Last year, Google's customer satisfaction score was three points higher than Bing's. This year, that gap has narrowed to an insignificant 1-point difference (chart below).
This has been a year of hyper growth for Bing, which had the largest year-over-year gains in search activity among the measured search engines, according to ComScore. In February 2011, Bing surpassed Yahoo in market share for the first time ever, and in March 2011, Bing-powered searches totaled 30% of all U.S. searches. Google-powered searches fell by 3% in 2010, yet Google remains the major player with approximately 70% of search engine market.
When Microsoft launched Bing.com two years ago, did you expect it would be serving up 30% of all U.S. search-engine requests by now? And that's against a competitor with much higher satisfaction levels than Facebook has.
Of course, it's a lot easier to switch search engines than social networks. And I'm not quite as enamored with Google+ in this early iteration as some other enthusiasts. For instance, posts appearing in my stream can be too lengthy for scanning -- and that simply won't scale if I want to follow hundreds of people as I do on Facebook or Twitter.
But it shows promise, and I'm open to the possibility of another social network -- especially if Google keeps working to improve the Plus interface -- in large part because I'm not especially happy with my Facebook experience. My enjoyment comes from family and friends who share content with me, not from the platform itself, which for me generally ranges from competent to annoying. Three major issues were cited by less-than-satisfied Facebook users, Freed said:
- Security and privacy concerns
- Overcommercialization
- Unexpected changes to the user experience
He predicts Google+ will be a competitor to Facebook, but also believes that competition will "cause Facebook to step up. ... Competition is always great for consumers."
The challenge for Google is to break what is in effect a "near monopoly situation," as Freed described it: If you want to connect with a wide range of people -- young and old, tech-savvy to tech-averse -- Facebook has become the default place online. Ten million is a lot of users for Google+ to have amassed in just a few weeks; but that still means most of the people I connect with elsewhere aren't there yet. Can Google+ build its user base beyond early tech adopters fast enough -- leveraging its own base of other Google users -- in order to reach a critical mass?
The issue for Facebook as I see it is whether it will start seriously improving the user experience for consumers of its service, not only its advertisers (where Facebook has a great deal of competition). Near monopolies can breed corporate cultures that stop focusing on innovations, until unexpected competition rises up -- something many local newspapers discovered in the Internet era. Newspapers had the lowest satisfaction score of all ACSI categories in its May information survey, and perhaps it's no coincidence that sector is no longer much of a growth industry. We'll see in the coming year if Facebook can respond more nimbly.
Sharon Machlis is online managing editor at Computerworld. Her e-mail address is smachlis@computerworld.com. You can follow her on Twitter 
@sharon000, on Facebook, on Google+ or by subscribing to her RSS feeds:
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Social media consumer satisfaction scores
| Site | 2010 | 2011 | % change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 77 | 78 | 1.3% |
| YouTube (Google) | 73 | 74 | 1.4% |
| All Others | 72 | 67 | -6.9% |
| 64 | 66 | 3.1% | |
| All Social Media | 70 | 70 | 0.0% |
Search engine consumer satisfaction scores
| Site | 2010 | 2011 | % change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google.com | 80 | 83 | 3.8% |
| Bing.com | 77 | 82 | 6.5% |
| All Others | 82 | 81 | -1.2% |
| Ask.com | 73 | 80 | 9.6% |
| Yahoo.com | 76 | 79 | 3.9% |
| MSN.com | 75 | 78 | 4.0% |
| AOL.com | 74 | 75 | 1.4% |
| All Portals & Search Engines | 77 | 80 | 3.9% |
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