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Is Facebook Changing for the Worse?


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Mona is an active member of FriendFeed, and also of Geeks. She has a Facebook account, but is unsure if she even wants to be part of that site anymore. She’s not happy with the way things have changed on Facebook.

Everyone seems to have a Facebook account these days it seems. It seems as though Facebook is planning to get into the music business, and some people aren’t happy about it. Mona has gotten increasingly angry with the site lately, so I brought her in on a Skype call.

Mona feels that Facebook is just over the top lately. They keep adding features that the browsers can’t keep up with. Firefox crashes every time she launches Facebook. There’s so many useless applications, according to her, that it’s just “a mess”. She feels as though she doesn’t know where to start when she logs in, it’s gotten so bad. She feels it’s wrong for Facebook to launch into the music area, as it’ll just add even more things that make the site harder to navigate and takes it further away from what it started out to be.

She doesn’t want to poke people, or tend virtual gardens. Mona just wants a nice, clean, easy-to-use site to network with friends and acquaintances. There aren’t any sites like this anymore, for grown-ups. Where’s the true social networking site, without all of the insane apps and games?

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20 Comments

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Chris Pirilloposteda discussion of him and a viewer, Mona, who has been on Facebook for a long time. She is pretty angry about the new design. She’s also mad about some of the viral applications as well as a number of other things. Honestly, she goes on a long rant

I’m unhappy that they now have “friend suggestions”. It’s not a bad idea, but I can’t opt out of it! It’s easy to mistake these for actual requests, and that’s uncool.

interesting take. i tend to like the new fb, but agree it is getting a bit crowded with all of the applications. I think the iphone will see similar push back. the idea is that users begin to become so overwhelmed with choices that they begin to simply block it out ENTIRELY. so its a lose lose for everyone.

Interesting observation is how quickly people are to ridicule, become outraged over a FREE application??? :)

it is simply the way of the world right now, I suppose.

Personally I prefer Twitter over Facebook. It’s not strictly a social network, but it allows me to easily stay in touch with people and that’s really all I care about.

If FaceBook is changing for the worse, then I guess MySpace is changing for the better? Alot of sites change and it’s not like you can make them change back. Most of the time it’s because users demand this and that to be added and a new design. The other? Advertising. The only way to change Facebook or any site is for you to buy them out and change it back… And then run it into the dirt.

Facebook is in fact overloaded with Apps. Yet if one keeps it clean and doesn’t join every crappy trend Facebook does not crash. This of course said aside from FBs policies which are nerve-wrecking.

If you’re an adult looking for a social network type site, give Plaxo a try.

I have to agree with Mona in many ways but my feelings is that each time they re-design the site is in most cases makes navigation of the site, some of the childish apps they have like giving you a gift of nothing….
It’s about time someone started speaking out . What is needed is for facebook to understand that mostly adults are using facebook. Treat Us Like Adults…

Honestly Chris you dissapoint me
the live feed is on the home screen moron!
The feed is on the first page you see

You dont use facebook much, eh chris?
Also, you should look up “homepage” in the dictionary
Last time i checked it means the ROOT URL (ex. facebook.com)

This Mona sais she dosent like apps, then why dosent she like the new facebook!?
The new facebook cleaned up the profile pages and focused on what mona here wants: View pics, send messages, etc.

as for the scripts…It took you 10 mins to log into facebook on FF!? I just installed firefox to try.
Im at the library, on a busy connection, running on battery power, with no cache, and it took just a few secs
Have your comp checked!

and what do you mean by friends being force notified of pics
it might appear in the mini-feed on the home page
other than that, you arent notified…
(Unless someone tagged you)
Please explain?

Sandar

I appreciate Mona’s angst, and I think the most important first step is to learn to say “no” by blocking applications for unwanted features that she doesn’t want to be part of.

Like social networking in the physical world, learning to say “yes” — to things about which you’re sure make your life better — and “no” — to the things you’re not sure you want to be bothered with — is an important life skill.

Blocking applications you don’t want will make Facebook a more pleasant experience and people will forgive you more often than you think.

I think the new Facebook is easy to use. They even have yellow information arrows to tell you what certain things do. And, when I have 10 tabs open in Firefox, Facebook never crashes my browser. Facebook has never crashed my browser.

I understand some of your complaints about the messaging privacy settings for Facebook, however, overall the Facebook privacy options are vastly superior to MySpace.

[...] Is Facebook Changing for the Worse? [...]

[...] Pirillo posted a discussion of him and a viewer, Mona, who has been on Facebook for a long time. She is pretty [...]

I’m with Mona on this one. That’s the problem; too many useless apps. I’m quite getting tired of receiving notifications where someone wants me to use these non-sense applications.

The once-clean Facebook I’ve known for a year, has been the messy Facebook. :(

“There aren’t any sites like this anymore, for grown-ups.”

That’s because grown-ups tend not to be on social networking services. Middle-age and older adults work a daily full-time job that keeps them very busy and they don’t have time for social networking. Plus half of them barely even know how to work a computer.

I do think Facebook is getting a bit out of control, but that happens to every site. They start to add more and more because they think users want it, but it just alienates everyone.

I like the new FB. The apps have pretty much always been useless/pointless… but it’s a neat little timewaster…

It can be clean as long as you don’t succumb to all the … little timewasting apps… I had a bit of a time navigating the options, but I haven’t had nearly as many problems as some. The folks seem nice enough when emailing complaints. I’ve emailed several with specifics. It loads quickly in Mozilla for me. I no longer bother with Explorer unless I absolutely have to.

The “Home” screen in FB IS the most interesting screen as it does give the updates on your friends. I’ve gotten a few… FEW folks from my high school group (from yahoo, to be discussed in the paragraph below) into FB and they seem to like it well enough to be hooked enough to FB MOBILE!… shrug… I dunno. I think they were far more comfortable with FB partly due to the “Home” update page and partly due to the useless apps. It’s fun, it’s social… it’s an escape.. or maybe we’re just a bunch of old fogies. meh.

The changes with FB are definitely annoying but, I still like it far better than Yahoo to be sure. Recently, Yahoo groups erased profiles and ruined my high school reunion work. Lots of folks left the group after having had personal information displayed as a default with the changeover. It took us long enough to get them online… then to have that happen… *sigh* I have thrown in the towel on that site. Hopefully, FB will work.

MySpace… not a huge fan of it, but it serves its purpose I suppose.

if you want “just” networking with nothing else, bore yourself and head over to LinkedIn.

I know FB isn’t perfect, but I enjoy much of what makes it . . . well . . . Facebook.

What Do You Think?