_____ will miss you.
A few weeks ago I decided to delete my Facebook account, so I was directed to this insanely well designed “deactivate” page. It shows pictures of you and your friends with the copy “_____ will miss you.” I was surprised to see my voluntarily provided information and content used not exactly against me, but in a way intending to sway my decision away from deactivating my account. It worked. In fact, I didn’t end up cancelling my account—I clicked on one of the images and browsed for another twenty-minutes or so. I had forgotten how many pictures and connections I was about to delete.
Today I found out that Julie Zhuo, a product manager at Facebook, recently gave a talk called Design Lessons From 350 Million, outlining how a team of 35 designers at Facebook designs a site for 400 million users.
Here’s one of the points from Julie’s presentation:
Be data informed.
Example: looked at deactivation page and adjusted it convince people to stay by adding pictures of friends. Had a big impact, kept 1 million people a year on the site.
One million people. That is a huge number of users saved by one clever page.
The whole five point summary posted by Luke Wroblewski is an interesting read, but I find the deactivate page to be particularly brilliant and diabolical.
Even so, your account is only “deactivated,” laying dormant until you choose to login again. For those braver than myself, the real Facebook delete button is here.
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