Does It Pay To Talk Smack About Facebook?

Posted In Facebook | 13 comments

A few days ago I was working on my video on finding great links to post on Twitter. I had a brief window of opportunity to get the video done in as privacy to film has been in short supply since my son Isaac was born. After about an hour and 5 takes I almost had the video in the can when my computer froze up on me. Of course at this moment my house chose to fill up with people again and taping another take was out of the question. The video would have to wait until another day.

Instead of a video I managed to write a rant on Facebook’s new redesign. Little did I know that this rant would recieve over 1700 Diggs and send tens of thousands of people to visit my site. If I would’ve known, I probably would have taken more time to write a more lucid post. I was not upset over the fact that Facebook had opened their profile pages to be more social networking friendly but that they did this after I had deleted over 200 contacts. As I said in the post:

… after deleting over 200 Facebook contacts, … in order to align myself better with the spirit of their service. I began reserving my Facebook personal profile for family and close personal friends only with a promise to set up a Facebook ‘page’ so that I could communicate with my FB social media contacts, colleagues and co-workers.

The recent redesign has made it easier than ever to segment your Facebook friends and personalize your home page. With enhanced privacy controls it is a piece of cake to define how various groups of friends can access your profile page. This helps me out a ton as far as using my Facebook profile to both stay in touch with my family and close personal friends AND also network online to meet new people and make professional contacts.

The reason I was so perturbed was that I would never have deleted 200+ Facebook contacts if these changes were already in place. I also had removed my Facebook link from my blog and denied a few friend requests I had pending. I actually like the new Facebook changes ,which some of you might not like to hear. I’m glad they are moving in this direction. I just hope they keep moving in this direction and don’t decide to move backwards in a week or two.

That being said I am reopening my Facebook account to new friend requests. It would be my real pleasure to hang with you on Facebook and get to know you better. If you’d like to accept my invitation please visit my Facebook profile and make a friend request. I’ll be sure to confirm it ASAP.

The old school, hardcore FB user has every right to dislike the new look and feel, but as a social media enthusiast, the more open Facebook becomes and the more options they give us for optimizing our accounts the better.

Tell me what you think?

Tags: Facebook, redesign

http://greenlasagna.wordpress.com Deborah

How much are they paying to to retract? I still hate the new interface, and miss so many things. I’m on Twitter more than FB now.

http://jessenewhart.com Jesse Newhart

@Deborah I new somebody would assume there was a payoff. No there was no hush money.

@Shawn Cohen You’re right some how I doubt that this post will get the same Digg traction but who knows. Let’s Digg it and find out

http://www.collegeplus.org Shawn Cohen

It’s amazing how much traction negative reporting gets compared to positive–I guess people thrive on that:-)

That’s a bummer about your contacts but it’s sweet you got the publicity!
http://autom.x.iabc.com Autom

Good reflection after-the-fact..what I often wonder is to what degree do current FB users (who are ‘Twitterless’ are refuse to tweet) use the redesign to their advantage (i.e., microblogging ‘what’s on their minds’?)
http://twittercism.com Sheamus

Interesting post Jesse and, for me, timely. I’ve always treated Facebook very differently to the other social media options: it’s been exclusively for my friends and (where I feel it’s not going to be too prohibitive and/or embarrassing) my family.

Hence, because of my perspective I’m quite skeptical when I’ve seen folk on Facebook who have 150+ friends. Certainly when I’ve seen people with 5,000 friends it makes me extremely dubious about the entire system. It isn’t and never was MySpace. At least, not for me.

This isn’t Facebook’s problem, though; it’s mine. And it’s my understanding of the word ‘friend’ that’s the issue.

If Twitter has taught me anything, it’s that there’s great value to be had in meeting new people and interacting with them in different ways. We’ll all always have our core group of ‘real-life’ (for want of a better term), offline friends, but I think as we move into the next decade the concept of what a friend actually is will begin to blur.

Go back even a few years and you were considered to be quite suspect if you spent a lot of time online. Now, it’s almost flipped the other way; people who are resistant to online mediums (and media) are seen as being quite antiquated. Out of touch.

I think that attitude will ultimately transcend to relationships, too. Possibly it already has. I’ve been re-considering my feelings about Facebook and because of the new privacy controls (plus, being absolutely frank, the great filter option on the main feed) I may re-address my stance. Twitter is a fantastic resource but there certainly are limits when it comes to anything personal. Moreover, as my follower count builds, I find myself being more mindful of the things I say and the links I share, because I know that as my reach increases the complexity and expectations and of the ‘hive mind’ will exponentially rise alongside it.

I suspect that if I relax a little about who I allow into my little Facebook world it might actually be of enormous personal benefit. Certainly I am encouraged by the idea of furthering the relationship with some of my Twitter contacts.

To address your point more precisely (strewth, I’ve waffled on): I certainly think that criticism, if written intelligently and not with blatant malice or spite, can and does carry a lot of weight. In Facebook’s case however I remain unconvinced that their recent makeover doesn’t appear somewhat desperate. People hate change and it’ll be interesting to see Facebook’s ‘approval rating’ in a couple of months, but 94% claiming they ‘hate’ the new design is a pretty big deal, I think. Certainly on my feed virtually everybody is complaining.

The last thing Facebook should do is roll back to how they were a week or so ago. They’ve already made that mistake with the drama over their terms of service. However, they do need to be careful going forward now, and I think they really need a big win before year-end. An amazing application or twist. Something that gets people excited; not angry and confused. Their current run of bad decisions, ill-perceived or otherwise, and the correlating bad press, is picking up a lot of momentum.

Otherwise, it can very quickly go downhill. It’s not that long ago people used to really like MySpace. And Geocities before that. Heck, I used to think Netscape.com was the place to be, once (i.e., 1994). While talking smack can have benefits, I suspect that too much of it – both from the social media elite and the bulk of Facebook’s user-base – could turn into a real problem for Mark Zuckerburg. He needs a win; and soon.
Kelly Ann

Hi Jesse,

I have to say that I don’t necessarily like the new Facebook layout. I think that there are too many kinks in it that should’ve be worked out before launching.

I love the fact that I can group different people and have separate security features for each of them. Then again, I did that with the older version just fine.

I don’t need to see every little detail about what every single person is doing. I like the older version of Facebook for that reason. I think it’s definately going to take getting used to. Overall, I don’t think that it’s the “best thing ever”. I have mixed feeling about it.

I didn’t do anything hasty about it when the changes were made. And I definately showed some restraint when voicing my opinions on it. Make no mistake though, I did voice my opinions ! I guess we all will have to see how all of this plays out. Maybe next time they will fix all the programming kinks before they launch it, and give more detailed/ better information on the upgrades, how it will work, look (etc) and people won’t have such a strong negative reaction. Just putting it in their blog is almost useless (I think) because I don’t think a majority of the people read it.

Rock on!
Kelly Ann
http://joeldaniel.wordpress.com joel daniel harris

@Jesse – good to hear Jesse. i was beginning to think i was alone in the wilderness of supporters of the latest change. by the way, your post on Tweetdeck has totally changed my approach to Twitter…thanks for the nudge in good directions.

@Deborah – I think it’s odd that you’re shifting from Facebook to Twitter. Facebook shifted in that direction for you. I wonder if there’s something more at the core of how you use Facebook vs Twitter that set up the dislike for you.
Alan Ralph

Hi Jesse,

I too was initially unsure about the Facebook redesign, but now I’ve come to the conclusion that it is an improvement on what we had before, in part because we can now filter the feed by friends and application.

My only quibbles are that it would be good to be able to filter out (and ideally block from the homepage) the more frivolous and/or uninteresting applications from the feed, and to put submitter’s comments after submissions rather than before.

Alan
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jason-Kulas/708304098 Jason

Jesse…huh?

The problem with the new FB isn’t look & feel…it’s that the functionality has been severely degraded.

People liked the old News Feed because the Story Types sliders helped them to filter out trivia.

Other people, like me, thought the Live Feed was amazing & unique because it offered such depth & connectivity, and in such a compact, efficient way. You could really see what your friends were doing, get involved, and discover new friends, new local events, and new groups that way.

The new feed floods you with trivia (especially app-activity spam), giving you virtually no control over it (other than shutting off a friend or group of friends completely), but gives you zero depth, and does all this in the most screen-space-consuming format possibly imaginable. It doesn’t help you manage information when you can barely scan through it all, while being forced to see 25 posts, each one saying “John gave XYZ a beer”, complete with icons, a paragraph, and a giant-sized font 25 times.

The lack of Live Feed has taken all the “social” out of your social networking. Without Live Feed and the information it provided, it’s IMPOSSIBLE to discover new local events, new friend connections, interesting new Groups, see when friends have changed their profile (because they gained/lost an interest/hobby/job/relationship), commented on a photo, tagged someone, etc.

Unless by some miracle it occasionally shows in the randomly disorganized, un-filterable Highlights. Which, if your friends are into anything you find objectionable, you’re forced to having it constantly floating on the right side of your page…with pictures no less (there are horror stories posted of people being forced to see items related to their ex-spouse because their friends know their ex-spouse, or parents upset their kids see adult items in the Highlights on their screen because their adult friends are interested in some stuff).

Yet you will definitely see every time anyone gives a shamrock to someone though. A giant entry, not just 1 line. All 25 times they do it.

Burying us in trivia isn’t cool. My friends remain my friends, even if sometimes some of them may be…not entirely fascinating…but now if they’re inundating me with trivia, my only choice in Twitbook is to block seeing ANY of their updates. Far inferior to the old Facebook.

The site has gone from unique, deep, & flexible, and good for keeping-up with friends, to evolving into a rigid and equally shallow Twitter clone. Interaction will suffer because no one can see what anyone else is doing.

And that’s only the very TIP of the iceberg of the ASTOUNDING number of things this new FB design gets wrong, both large things and small things. It’s really quite amazing how much they have messed-up some stuff that was once great. 175 million users great.

Yet Zuckerberg writes that it’s stupid for really good companies to listen to their customers. Good job Zuckerberg, soon you’ll have fewer of them.

great.

Many people have cut back on facebook now, are frustrated, angry, are sponsoring “facebook suicide” groups (leave permanently on a certain deadline), are checking now more into MySpace, Twitter, etc. They figure if facebook is going to be Twitbook, they might as well be on Twitter, which many like better for real-time stream-of-consciousness.

There’s a common refrain out there now about this update and the complete destruction of the Feed…people say that this update “has broken my addiction to facebook”.

Some of the users may now permanently be using facebook less & less, even if they fix it. Not only are the users angry & betrayed feeling, but this design has broken their cycle of involvement. And they’re much more willing now to give another (or first) try to MySpace, Twitter, etc

For those that want to pressure facebook to fix things, see the action steps in here:
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=61010781930

http://jessenewhart.com Jesse Newhart

@Jason You make some great points. I too feel bad having to hide certain friends because they want to take every quiz in facebook. They could easily rectify the problem by bringing back some of the live feed functionality. I wouldn’t be surprised if they do. Facebook doesn’t have to listen to every complaint put against them but they do have to listen to the criticism that makes sense. Hopefully they will.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jason-Kulas/708304098 Jason

I’m not terribly optimistic they’ll fix things all that fast, and by the time they do many will have left, or cut way back permanently, and the rest will have suffered by the reduced interaction.

Zuckerberg’s email, telling his employees it’s stupid to listen to customers, isn’t encouraging.

I think the only thing that will get them to move is pressure…from users, media exposure, etc.

You got a lot of diggs before…you should post about what they got wrong. You can do a part of pressuring them. Even if facebook fixed only the major functional blunders, and left the smaller interface bonehead moves alone, that would be a big improvement.

They need not only more Live Feed-ish depth (for those that want the depth), they need better filtering (like they HAD…Story Types sliders), because some people login less than daily, and the amount of detailed info & trivia that Live Feed, and the current News Feed, give, is way too much. Facebook easily could, and should, accomodate all types of users.

I have noticed many bonehead moves in this design…stuff they had SO right before and is now SO wrong…and I see so many posts from other people noticing other stuff…it’s just amazing.
http://twitter.com/car4dave Dave

I do not mind the changes, it feels more familiar, like a cross between facebook, twitter and friendfeed. I hardly go there anyway, I get messages, etc on my cell in text and mobile browser. I only add people who I have at talked to at least once, friends and relatives. I do not care for most of the apps and that seems to me mostly what I see there. I do use the twitter app which sets my twitter status as my facebook status.
DJ

The one big beef I have with the new facebook, is the inability now, to not see in my feeds, apps that friends use that I, myself, neither use, nor wish to see. It used to be that you could block annoying gift and poke apps, but that is not longer the case. The only work around to not seeing such apps is to stop viewing all content from the friend who uses them. I do not wish to block my friend who’s an avid app users, but I must, else my entire home page feed, as it was this morning, will be filled with all of the gift actions said friend sent out to her various friends, many of who are not even within my network.

Does It Pay To Talk Smack About Facebook?

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