- Mark Dolliver

The rapid rise of online social networking must mean that social-media sites enjoy strong customer satisfaction, right? Not according to an American Customer Satisfaction Index report released today by ACS in conjunction with ForeSee Results. And while other research has found that many users of social media aren't averse to encountering sales messages in that context, the report suggests that "commercialization" nonetheless poses difficulty for overall customer satisfaction with such sites.

"Customer satisfaction with social-media sites is poor," declares the report, with the industry posting an aggregate score of 70 -- "the lowest industry aggregate score of any of the e-business or e-retail industries measured by the ACSI." Facebook garnered a lowly 64 and MySpace an even-lowlier 63. The sector's aggregate score would have been even weaker were it not that Wikipedia got a more-respectable 77. (The ACSI score is based on customer interviews that gauge companies on such factors as perceived quality, perceived value, customer complaints, customer loyalty and so on. Responses are amalgamated to yield a score on a scale from 0 to 100.)

As the report bluntly puts it, "The other companies that join Facebook and MySpace in the bottom 5 percent are all airlines and cable companies, which are two perennially low-scoring industries with terrible customer satisfaction." For comparison's sake, the highest-ranking industries -- personal care/cleaning products and soft drinks -- each got an aggregate ASCI score of 85 in their most recent measurement, vs. a 66 for airlines and cable companies.

Why the poor scores for Facebook (now on the threshold of enlisting its 500 millionth user) and MySpace? "Customers are not satisfied with their experience on these sites," says the report. "When asked what they like least about Facebook, survey respondents gave answers including privacy and security concerns, the technology that controls news feeds, advertising, the constant and predictable interface changes, spam, navigation troubles, annoying applications with constant notifications, and functionality, to name a few." (The report seems not to have intended sarcasm when it ended this long list of complaints by terming them "a few," but you have to wonder.)

The report says older folks "are less satisfied with Facebook than are younger people, who are less impacted by the privacy concerns and changes to the interface." So, can social sites take comfort in knowing their detractors skew old? Not really, given another point made by the report: While young people are the ones who put Facebook on the map, "the fastest-growing Facebook segments are older adults" -- which, this analysis adds, means that "higher satisfaction among young people will not carry the company far."

Noting MySpace's decline in market share as Facebook has surged, the report says it's "less of a surprise" that satisfaction with it is low: "If people were satisfied with MySpace, it wouldn't have fallen so quickly so fast." Consumers' similar level of dissatisfaction with Facebook means "the good news is that there is ample room for MySpace to stage a comeback." Then again, the further bad news is that MySpace "is not yet poised to take advantage and Facebook still has a near monopoly on hundreds of millions of users."

Though its score was unspectacular, given the brand's prominence, YouTube fared better than Facebook and MySpace, garnering an ASCI score of 73. The reason for its better showing is not flattering to advertisers, though. "Users of YouTube report much less annoyance and interference from ads than do users of Facebook and MySpace, though they also report that ads are less relevant to them," says the ACSI/ForeSee Results analysis of the findings.

In drawing thematic conclusions from the data, the report suggests that the increasing presence of advertising within social media could be a notable source of customer dissatisfaction. "Commercialization of social media sites may be impacting satisfaction," it says. "The strategy of starting out as a free service with no advertising or revenue source is an effective way to build traffic and loyalty, as is evidenced across all of these sites. However, starting out that way also trained customers to expect an experience on these sites that is relatively unencumbered by advertising and commercialization."

Sites' subsequent moves to generate revenue have brought "severe downward pressure on customer satisfaction," the report says. (This is the first time ACSI has measured social-media sites, so the report does not offer data on consumers' previous opinions of these brands.)

The other thematic conclusion is that "Evolution is a better strategy than revolution when it comes to changing social-media sites." While stressing that it is "not recommending a static site experience with no changes," the report says "improvements need to be better planned, executed and communicated."