Socialsama

Facebook’s recent redesign also resulted in a number of changes to the ways applications interact with the Stream and how Fan Pages are now Pages (who does this product marketing? Dave Morin? Sorry, but this nomenclature is really difficult for the rest of the world. You know what the first thing people see when they go to www.socialagency.com? Our home PAGE. Then they navigate to other PAGES. Interestingly, the web had this system of calling everything PAGES for a few years before Facebook came along and started calling business profile listings in their system PAGES. OK – end rant. Jackasses. OK – really end rant). Now applications can’t put items into the Stream (which used to be the newsfeed which kind of exists but no one sees it…uh-oh, feel another rant coming on…holding back) without direct user interaction. E.g. to put a story on the Stream, the app must pop up a dialog which specifically asks the user to place the story. Now some might think this is better b/c now every user action that makes it to the Stream has been explicitly authorized to be there by the user. But from an application developer’s perspective, it is miserable. In the past, an application could post to the newsfeed after the user took some sort of interesting action on the app, but did not have to put a glaring popup in the user’s face. Those actions could have occurred in a variety of places in the use of the app. In my view, this change will result in 1) a gradual decline in the number of apps able to make use of forcing users to send messages to the stream, 2) more users blocking more apps from their stream entirely, 3) a reduction in meaningful app usage overall on Facebook. If the only apps that are successful are the ones that constantly exhort the user to post to their stream, and those are largely characterized as list builders and quiz apps, then fewer and fewer people will take them over time – they will just get boring (at least I hope so, b/c I really don’t care what rock band from the eighties you are – no, really I don’t – don’t do it, don’t post the results of that quiz to your stream – don’t). Ah, this post is too long now, so I don’t have room or time at the moment to get into all my thoughts on the Fan Pages -> PAGES (I have more than the screaming above), so I’ll post again shortly.

We haven’t said much about the Facebook redesign and the other changes in functionality. In short, I don’t care for the redesign. I get Twitter and the need for people to broadcast inanities at all hours of the day (I know, Twitter can be used for much more than that). But I just don’t/didn’t use Facebook in that way. Seeing what an acquaintance ate for breakfast this morning simply doesn’t start my day off the right way. I forget where I saw it, but Facebook makes a very good CRM for your friends. Great way to keep up, see the major events in people’s lives, offer condolences when warranted. And I would be willing to stay on all day to occasionally stumble upon such info. But I always found the statuses to be the least compelling aspect of the site. Now they are the most prominent. I know that Facebook has introduced all sorts of filters to block unwanted Stream spam, but frankly, since they introduced the spam to me (unlike Twitter where I have done it to myself) I am a little pissed that I have to go create a whole bunch of filters – which will likely mean that I will eventually miss one of those big life events that I was using Facebook to stay abreast of in the first place.

I think it is great for Facebook to move fast and innovate – they have to in order to make sure they don’t get eclipsed by some other service just as they overtook MySpace. But as nature shows us, not every evolutionary change is a positive one. This one is bad.

I am not the only one who has reacted this way. The following sites had plenty to say:
Facebook Haters reach a million strong

Top 10 Missing features of facebook redesign

Facebook goof cripples controversial homepage poll
There were many, many more where those came from.