What the hell has happened to Facebook? I logged in for the first time in a long time yesterday to respond to a message from this idiot and I’m greeted by all sorts of strange and unwanted distractions. There’s little colored icons everywhere… I’m getting “super poked” (what?) by people I’ve never heard of… the NYPD wants to hire me…
How is this site so popular?
Aside from conspiratorial stories like this one, the only press I’ve read about Facebook is good press. Surely I can’t be the only one who remembers the Spartan-like Facebook of days past, with its clean interface and simple presentation. Now it’s all Las Vegas-like: flashy doodads left and right and men slapping escorts’ “business cards” in your face. Charming, sure, but highly intrusive nonetheless.
I fully understand that these social networking Web sites are all the rage with the kids right now, but consider me the old man in the room who has no idea what’s going and wished things were like they used to be: stale and predictable.
Stop being friends with stupid people, and you will stop getting request for things like “cookie fortune” and other godawful apps.
Facebook is what you make out of it. Disable things you don’t like, block annoying people or just kill your account. Bitching about it isn’t going to fix anything, espcially when you back up your complaints this poorly.
most of the apps are simply toys at the point.
i’m developing something that will turn up the heat & be useful, fun & above all worthwhile.
Come on, facebook is the only big name in this space that is actually trying to innovate… Facebook apps was an amazing step forward in aggregating the Internet.
And yes, granted, those afraid of “change” might be a bit put off (OMFG, they changed the nav!! Where the f** am i!?) but, in the longrun, it’s a good thing. Facebooks implementations thusfar have been clean, intuitive, and if you just sit back and spend 5 minutes catching up on what is new, you’ll find that it’s much better and more powerful than all of the other MySpaces out there.
It’s all right for people who signed up when facebook was new and regularly visit, but people like me who just joined today find it overwhelming with the number options, gifts, superpoke, applications, maps etc that are there. There is just too much in one place.
Dear OP and following complainers,
If facebook is so obviously flawed, why not make your own social networking website and see how successful your version is? :)
josh
Not colored icons!
NOOOOOOOOOO!
I like to call the day anybody could make applications ‘the day that Facebook died’.
@Josh: I am :)
I’m a fairly recent Facebook convert, and I love that my friends and I can send quick notes to each other and see each other’s pics. Yes, I know we could do it via e-mail, but with Facebook you see what your friend posted and you are reminded to talk to them or you respond to what they are saying. I am not the FB target market, being 40+. I found the apps annoying at first but quickly learned to ignore them. Obviously people like them, as they seem to be adding them fast and furiously.
As far as FB vs MySpace goes, the facebook interface is clean, consistent, and easy on the eyes. A much more enjoyable experience.
There’s too much crap going on in Facebook. It’s turning into MySpace…I still think it’s better, because it doesn’t crash when I go to someones profile, but it’s got to end somewhere.
I’m all for having developers do stuff for facebook, but lets keep out the stupidity.
how does opening the facebook platform for 3rd party developers and for startups who want to use the existing network infrastructure while giving each user more control on per application and per person basis than most other sites, make it any complicated… don’t like it? sign out
Yes the social sites Facebook notwithstanding….are big big business….we all know the numbers….. that these social sites sold for ….You Tube 1.6 Billion, Digg $60 Million, MySpace.com $580 million ….. and MySpace.com now has 106 Million users and counting…… In 14 years of starting and growing Internet businesses and all my years before in offline business development I have never witnesses such a phenomenon of businesses selling for this much money in such a short period of time. As a result I dont thing they had the time to develop infrastructures and clear profit models…. its been an unprecedented two years in this industry and in my opinion a paradigm shift in business as we know it historically …. but the reason I bring this up is that Facebook is similar in that they have had unparalleled growth and not much time to really develop all of the service applications (whistles and bells) that are possible to optimize their position and profits.
So annoying or not any business who experiences the kind of growth, valuation, and success as rapidly as these social sites (like Facebook)
the only constant will be change ….we ain’t seen nothin yet .
Great.
http://www.ebooksdb.net
LOL facebook ! its just like fire fox everyone misses the original light simple easy to use interface it had before.
I just deleted my account. Facebook is **it though i will admit not as bad as myspace. None the less it has gotten insane and i could not stand it anymore so i deleted it yesterday.
You write for ChrunchGear and think Facebook is complicated? Hello??
Boy, that idiot kid who didn’t sell Facebook when he had the chance… he’ll be on his deathbed wishing he hadn’t been such a putz.
SnakesInMyPants: That sounds like a near-sighted judgment call. Besides, if you’re complaining about it now, imagine how much worse you would have felt had he sold it.
yes once facebook got opened to all the public it went downhill, sure the usability is better than myspace, but at what cost? it seems like just another thing that was great and got crappy because of too many people. I have unplugged from facebook and myspace because its just not worth it. myspace is so filled with bots and ads, its useless. facebook used to be an actually useful college tool untill it kept changing every 5 minutes.
Oh yes, I completely agree. I was content with the easy simple design of the old facebook. One day I get on, and I’m spammed with hundreds of invites to “Hot or Not” and “Rate Me Requests” ect ect. Then when I got to them, facebook WARNS that they aren’t from facebook and they are from another site, which makes No Script complicated and I have to continually “Temporarily Allow” each site that I want to use their little facebook program.
I wish it went back to the way it was.
~Jqwerty
Man, I made it to the bottom of this page after 2 hours. I wasn’t sure what to do at the top. There were all these buttons and pictures of things to purchase. I wasn’t sure so I hit subscribe a few times and waited on something called an RSS. After I downloaded the sponge bob screensaver and placed a bid for a 3ft 1m Optical Audio Cable For Sony Ps3 Xbox 360 905n, I finally made it down to the comment area to post a response to the ridiculous notion that browsing the web and updating your profile is complicated.
Facebook’s only cool when you are in high school and college, it stops being fun afterwards
I deleted my Facebook after I realized how much social networking websites did nothing for me except made me feel like data entry 134235534 and how creepily the general trend of the internet and ‘personal information’ is headed. MySpace was a no brainer to not ever sign up for, Facebook was a no brainer after it opened itself to the public. Frankly I’m just paranoid.
I like to be able to know every single thing about you with a click of a mouse, and have you know nothing about me.
Despite all its new additions, the facebook design is still ten times cleaner than myspace. Some of the new features they’re offering are kind of cool (I like the “movies” function) but it is a bit too much. They’re throwing a bunch of shit at the wall and seeing what sticks.
Yes, I hate FaceBook. I have to admit, some features are rather nice but I think its pathetic how people are falling over each other to signup with it. Too complicated and lacks alot of simplicity, as well as the fact that its oddly personal and tells you and others things that some shouldnt know.
I run my own community site, WumbaShare:
http://www.wumbashare.com
And as you see, I use a simple interface while giving users the features they want at the same time. Sites could get a few pointers from mine perhaps.
Forget Facebook. The new threat for MySpace is YUWIE.. you get paid when people view your profile. Clever idea, giving advertising revenue back to the user. You also get paid for the profile views of people you refer. Check it out here.
Call me shy or paranoid, but I find most social networks’ privacy controls a bit creepy – I can’t post photos for only a couple of my mates to see – everyone gets to have a look (even if its limited to “All My Friends” – its still not intimate enough). I know I could just send stuff via email, but that defeats the purpose of me storing my photos online in one spot.
Basically, its come to the point where all we need is a good looking site that offers standard SN tools but with better privacy controls (so I can share some photos/blogs/news/whatever with some friends, and others with others, or even keep them private if I want).
One site I found and have been using with a bunch of mates is Obami – it suits me perfectly cos it offers all of this.
LOL, I totally agree to this post, and it was written 2 years ago… I wonder what you think about facebook now XD
You should see facebook now. It’s complete trash. They take away options constantly and expect people to stay? Good riddance to that awful site, I won’t be using it ever again. No idea why anyone would use this complicated site, which ignores everything its users want. (Hence the petitions millions signed asking for old facebook back and were completely ignored.)