(please ignore the poor grammer, structure, etc. of this article. I’m not awake, and will clean it up later)
Man, some companies are just plan stupid. You’d think that at some point, they’d actually sit down with their users to check to see if a new “feature” is truely wanted. But, they don’t. What makes it worse, is that the company in question is one of the “Web 2.0″ish companies that everyones in love with. Who am I talking about? Why, dear old Facebook.com. Beloved by students everywhere, despised and hated by teachers, parents, and administrators.
Well, I should say, used to be loved by students. You see, Facebook has made some rather controversal changes in the past few months. First, they added a section for highschool kids. Well, thats fine and dandy, though it brings into question at what age should kids be allowed to post in-depth, personal information. Secondly, and here’s where Facebook really jumped the shark, was in their recent update of the entire system. For everyone.
Before yesterday, when you logged into facebook you were greeted with your standard homepage. A listing of any messages or add requests you’d received that day, options to edit your profiles, see your friends, etc. All fine and dandy, rather what you’d expect when logging in. It also was minimalist and attractive. Yesterday, however, when you logged in you were greeted with this. A decidely not so clean, uncluttered, and simple interface.
Your first reaction is along the lines of “oh wtf is this?” shortly followed by “hey, this is pretty cool. Its so much easier to find stuff.” Then, about ten minutes later it hits. What makes it so much easier to find, is really not so cool at all. Previously, you had to tirelessly go to each of your friends pages to see what changed and unless you had a photographic memory it was often hard to tell. Now, however, every slightest action is highlighted on the first page you see. Who messaged who, who noted who, who joined what group, etc etc the list goes on.
This wasn’t a feature the members of facebook wanted, nor was it one we needed. I dont want to know whenever someone leaves a group, or changes their sexual orientation. If they’re a close friend, I’ll find out when I talk to them. Or, if they’re not so close, maybe someday I’ll notice it. Either way, its not that damn important. I don’t need real-time feeds of every person in my network. Where was the feature test? Where was the interaction with the user on whether this was good? And where the hell is the “contact” page that actually allows you to contact them. All you have is email addresses which provide no feedback.
Thankfully, I’m not the only person upset about this. The story was featured on Slashdot, Digg, TechCrunch. Now, thats just outside of the facebook playground. Inside, we’ve seen the creation of a half-dozen groups with titles like “I HATE THE NEW FACEBOOK (Stalker) LAYOUT” that has over 4,000 members, while the largest group is “Students against Facebook News Feed (Official Petition to Facebook) which has over 126,000 members and the “wall” (an inside message board) has 10,000 messages and hundreds of threads deriding the changes.
It might seem silly that so many people are upset over a change that makes public information, well, public but its the way its been done thats more upsetting. It’s like having someone out in the streets who screams out everytime you change your sexual preference, or who you called, or who you emailed. It breaks down the walled garden. And its simply stupid.