Everyone remember a few months back when Facebook adjusted their TOS with "scary" wordage that got the whole community in an uproar, then apologized profusely and re-directed themselves? It was seen by many as a 'positive step in the right direction' and showed that they 'really care what their users think.'  I saw dozens of facebook groups talking about how "angry" people were about the new TOS... people threatening to leave Facebook and never come back, or something.  Seriously, guys? 

Now Digg has this awful framejacking toolbar thinger that clearly was designed to just boost their own stats, and it's causing a similar fuss.  Digg will undoubtedly backtrack and 'listen' to their users and remove it.  As if they wouldn't have seen this coming if they had done even the tiniest bit of research.  To suggest that they didn't know in advance what the reaction would be seems pretty naïve to me.

Companies from all industries have to be more agile, pay more attention to their customers, etc., but this isn't an example of that in action, in my opinion.  To me, being agile means being able to learn and adapt quickly to build what your customers actually want... not shifting your direction at the whims of whatever marketing dept. came up with these ideas, then shifting back when you 'realize' you've ticked people off.

People for whatever reason (probably because most people don't actually have real problems) want to feel like they have a 'cause' to go after.  It feels to me like it's becoming a trend to just do something completely off the wall so you give them the cause, then once it's big enough, backtrack and act apologetic.

Apparently, my cause du jour is to fight against idiotic causes.