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New Facebook Design Confuses Many, Obscures Features

2 pointsby ksvsalmost 17 years ago

2 comments

jessestayalmost 17 years ago
unalone, you have some excellent points. By the tone of your voice, I clearly struck a nerve. I appreciate your constructive comments though. Here's my own response to your comments:<p>"That's because Groups and Pages serve as a sort of utility on Facebook. Yes, they're abused by immensely stupid people. But where SHOULD they go? On the "info" page, which is designed to show the user's INFORMATION on the site? That's what groups and pages ARE. On the "feed" page, which is supposed to show incoming activity? Yes - that's why they ARE displayed on the site when there's activity regarding them."<p>My point on this was that it's now in a different place than before. I recall no blog post or documentation by Facebook pointing out that these were going to be removed. I use them frequently to find out affiliations a user is a part of, and with them having moved, I had to search to find them now. Once users get used to this, I agree - it's in a good place for now. However, they could have provided better documentation to users that this was going to be there. It wasn't in the developer preview until it was just launched, and I argue it wasn't even in there last week, because I looked pretty thoroughly last week when I was preparing this.<p>"1) Facebook is not a site for businesses. It's a site for connecting with people you know. They fucking SAY that when you register. If you're trying to exploit it, you do it AGAINST the system, and them stifling that is a GOOD thing."<p>I beg to differ on this one, and this is part of the problem. Businesses see Facebook as a huge opportunity, and it's part of the reason the 25 and older audience is the fastest-growing audience on Facebook. As Facebook ignores this, businesses, and professionals will also flock away from the site.<p>"You're supposed to use your network affiliation to announce your job. Not groups, and not pages."<p>Facebook has announced they are eventually removing the networks so this won't be the case for long. Facebook also isn't just about "announcing a job". It's also about providing businesses an opportunity to interact in a reasonable and social way with users. Facebook is a tool for both users and businesses. This is how Facebook makes money and I doubt they're going to ignore it.<p>"The changing of the FriendFeed information is because Facebook has suddenly added a lot MORE functionality into their feeds. Apps can show MORE information now, because there are multiple tiers of app distribution."<p>I agree completely, but my point there was that Facebook gave developers little to no time to improve this. This is why you're seeing poor feeds, and poor use of the design by applications. I agree though that this is a bigger opportunity for developers, and over time this should be much better.<p>Oh, and you can call me Jesse. :-)
unalonealmost 17 years ago
Has Mr. Stay not looked at any of the Facebook documentation explaining why they're acting like they are? This article smacks of illiteracy or, worse, apathy.<p>"Facebook seems to have moved the Pages and Groups on users' profile pages. Now, to access Pages or Groups, one has to click one page deep from the main profile Page into the "Info" tab, and if you scroll down your Pages and Groups will be in the main section below. What's even more odd is that there is no way to drag those Groups or Pages around like there was before in order to put them higher up for users to see."<p>That's because Groups and Pages serve as a sort of utility on Facebook. Yes, they're abused by immensely stupid people. But where SHOULD they go? On the "info" page, which is designed to show the user's INFORMATION on the site? That's what groups and pages ARE. On the "feed" page, which is supposed to show incoming activity? Yes - that's why they ARE displayed on the site when there's activity regarding them.<p>And clicking and dragging is a fuck-all feature on Facebook. It was necessary when there were hugely cluttered profiles. Now that Facebook's gone ahead and ORGANIZED things, it's like this magical land where you don't HAVE to guess where things are, because you KNOW where they are. But no - we can't assume that Facebook, one of the most ruthlessly efficient sites online, actually knows what it's doing. We're still comparing it to MySpace, after all. That means Facebook's bad and stupid.<p>"Facebook evidently does not want users to see Pages and Groups as the first things users see when they visit your profile, as the company seems to be saving the business portions of Facebook for later. They seem have put low priority on them lately."<p>Possibly for two reasons.<p>1) Facebook is not a site for businesses. It's a site for connecting with people you know. They fucking SAY that when you register. If you're trying to exploit it, you do it AGAINST the system, and them stifling that is a GOOD thing.<p>2) You're supposed to use your network affiliation to announce your job. Not groups, and not pages.<p>"It's obvious that Applications have now moved to the "boxes" tab, and Facebook has made this clear in several announcements and blog posts recently. They did cut developers short however in the time frame they offered, and developers aren't happy either. For this reason you'll see most of your applications in that Boxes tab, rather than on your main Profile page, and applications like the FriendFeed app on Facebook no longer display detailed information in your news feed, but rather, "so and so has new activity in FriendFeed"."<p>The changing of the FriendFeed information is because Facebook has suddenly added a lot MORE functionality into their feeds. Apps can show MORE information now, because there are multiple tiers of app distribution.<p>And application developers can now design an ENTIRE PROFILE PAGE for their application, if the user opts in. That means, wait for it, they have MORE space to display things. The "boxes" tab is really the "shitty applications" tab, since designing a profile page is not difficult at all, and we're not supposed to care about shitty applications. If Top Friends can make a page devoted to hopeless cliquishness, any developer can do the same. (Though the fact that Facebook now implements "top friends" functionality into their friends display means that hopefully people will stop being stupid. (That was a joke.)<p>"As you can tell from the original revision of this post that I mentioned above, even I was confused by the new design (and I wrote two books about Facebook)! While I like how clean the new design is, getting to know where features are and aren't will take some time. This is going to confuse many of you, and there will be some backlash. My hope is, that with time, all this will work out for a better, cleaner, less spammy Facebook that we can all appreciate."<p>My complaint was the opposite - not much changed at all. The features are all basically where they used to be, and when they moved, it's easy to find there they went.<p>And - also - who the FUCK writes a book about Facebook, let alone TWO? No. Don't reply. I know the excuses. I know some people care about this shit. Those people deserve to be shot point-blank or at the very least denied the privilege of blogging in a way that I see the link. I know I'm becoming the resident angry person on HN, but there's a REASON for that, and that reason is that things like this are just absolutely PATHETIC.