Social media could improve their features immediately
Have you ever thought “man, I wish Twitter just did [insert feature],” or “why the hell doesn’t Facebook do [insert feature]” and gotten annoyed? Have you gone out to seek tools like IFTTT (“if this, then that”) which use conditional logic to connect unrelated tools online and make them communicate online?
By using a tool like IFTTT, you can improve your own social media experience. Want all of your Facebook photos to automatically go to your Dropbox account, or you want your Gmail attachments to automatically back up, you want your Twitter profile picture to be your latest Instagram photo, and so forth? IFTTT.
So this brings up something that annoys me to no end – there are features missing in every single social media platform. Just think about this for a minute… these brands (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) are wiping their asses with cash. Cash that could be used to improve their functions.
What I propose is that all brands have staff devoted to monitoring sites like IFTTT for recipes people are creating that improve the brand’s functionality. Is everyone using the recipe that sends all Instagram photos to Tumblr? Those two brands should be more closely examining their link and how they can play nicely together to improve one another and meet consumer demand.
Alternatively, IFTTT can and has been used for entrepreneurs to come up with ideas for companies that serve customer demand and meet the feature gaps we are all frustrated by with social networks of all sizes.
Call it a rant, call it an observation, but I must insist that IFTTT is golden for brands and entrepreneurs because it is a democratic voting process that shows in real time what people want, and what they are actually using. Wakey, wakey, Facebook!
