Here's a little secret for you. I hate Facebook and I always have. I mean really, really hate it. I feed all my stuff to it, but I can't stand it and try not to go in there unless absolutely necessary - then feel guilty that I've missed a bunch of comments and invitations and whatever.
I don't hate that it has connected me to lots of people from my past and my present, nor do I hate being able to catch a glimpse of peoples' lives and find things in common. I don't hate some of those original motivation factors for its existence - I hate that it seems to have forgotten about those motivators while it's trying to keep up with the Joneses.
I do hate that it keeps all your data and you can't have it back. I hate that it has the worst usability of any site ever. (And I wonder about how the power of personal connections and tagged photos can keep people using it in spite of that). For example - I hate that many people message me through it then I have to actually go in there into the swamp to get my messages and reply rather than be able to from my email. I hate that when I have one task to do, usually involving a group, I can never remember how to get to where I need to be to do that task. I hate the fact that I am supposed to stay ahead of the curve on it yet I get stressed out the minute I have to go in there to check out their umpteenth new upgrade which seems to make it worse each time they do one. As a massively popular social network, or as something I have to keep on top of from a professional/association/nonprofit standpoint? Hate it.
The overarching, all-encompassing reason I hate it so much? Facebook suffers from the worst case of feature creep that I have ever seen. Joshua Porter defines feature creep as "the process of slowly adding features to a product or interface over time. The result is a design that is less than the sum of its parts. The features may have added functionality, but the overall effect is negative. The complexity brought on by the features has, instead of adding value, made the design undesirable and a pain to use". All those "improvements" they supposedly made? I still haven't figured out how to navigate the "new" profile pages - which are now not new, since they're changing them - AGAIN. Talk about trying to be all things to all people, trying to compete with Twitter, trying whatever it is they are trying - which is totally unclear to me and totally irrelevant. How about making it user-friendly? How about making the features invisible? How about not making me click seventeen times because they keep moving the link to my groups?
So sue me. Anyway - I didn't mean to rant. I just wanted to tell you that it's ok to hate Facebook. I'm right there with you. What we can't do, neither you nor me, is ignore the fact that many of our stakeholders love Facebook and are hanging out there. So we just need to plug along and figure out whether it's a strategically good idea to build a presence there in order to connect with our members.
To that end, here's a bunch of Facebook resources for you.
Facebook for Associations (my article for ASAE's Communications News)
Facebook demographics (Quantcast)
Facebook - What you Need to Know (SocialFish resource)
Facebook Lessons From Kindergarten - SocialFish Food e-newsletter
Facebook Case Study: Chapters - Peggy Hoffman
What, Why and How of Facebook Pages - Beth Kanter
Facebook Pages vs Groups
And on the new changes:
Facebook announces new home pages - it's all about the stream
Facebook announces a myriad of changes
I will tell you I have not yet investigated the latest changes. I'm hoping Lindy will go in and just tell me what I need to know. :)
But I just wanted you to know that I feel your pain. You are not alone! We'll figure it out together.
3.09.2009
It's OK to hate Facebook
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5 comments:
Hoo-boy do I ever agree with you on this.
There's no sense of life and vibrancy in FB, at least not for me. Twitter, by contrast, is unbelievably alive. And twitter's baseline simplicity is the key difference between the two.
Say it ain't so! We're just now starting out with Facebook; our most recent survey showed 50% of the participants are using it constantly/often! The second and third most popular were MySpace(6%) and LinkedIn (3%). 96% of them "never" use Twitter or don't know what it is. Sigh.
I am totally with you. As a work thing, I think it serves its purpose and has value--but even then, as you said, it's a usability cluster f. I hate that you can't reply to messages directly from email; I hate the ads that take up a 3rd of the page; I hate that you have to log on to do anything--and I HATE all the apps like Li' Green Patch (ok, actually the little flowers are cute but the app is horrible) and just the time suck that is Facebook.
The whole thing makes me feel constantly guilty, what with ignoring dozens of "which dog are you?" or similar quizzes sent by "friends" every day and just generally not being able to keep up with even the friends I'm actually glad to have connected with courtesy of FB. Of course that's the rub--FB has put me in touch with many long-lost friends and lets me keep up with people I otherwise wouldn't be able to even if only with status updates and photos.
One last point then I'll digress--my current frustration with it is the fact, because we are using it as a business tool, people assume it has the same functionality of our website or data. I am constantly fielding questions: "How can we separate members from non-member fans?" We can't. "When you search for our name, a bunch of other entries come up--what can we do?" Nothing. Can we do this? No. Can we do that? No. I'm not used to being a "we can't" kind of person and I hate that FB presents so many roadblocks.
The true measure perhaps of the maturity (or shall we say success) of a new "thing" is when "members" begin to poke holes. At the start there are always naysayers and along the way non-users who complain. So, really I'm suggesting that perhaps this "member" love/hate for Facebook validates its power? Anyhow, I feel the same and am largely baffled right now with the new pages and not sure whether to migrate my groups to pages or if anyone associated with my groups really care if its a page or a group. And I think I don't either ... so there Facebook!
PS thanks for the call-out and yes we're exploring Facebook for chapters and KiKi L'Italien and I are are presenting a session at ASAE Toronto on our social media explorations.
Facebook? Let me count the ways *I* hate it:
* The name itself is bluntly and tellingly graceless and unimaginative (as 98% of its users, I imagine);
* It contributes NOTHING except void verbiage;
* It fosters cyber-bullying and stalking
* It reinforces insecure individuals' sense of dependency on the opinion of others
And finally, the thing I LOVE about it:
* I never had a FB account, and never will. :)
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