Why the Facebook App Is Rated Below 2 Stars

As an iOS developer (and long time developer of apps dating back to early MacOS) I find it indefensible to have so many app crashes. This statements "As you may know, Facebook does not have big QA teams…we believe that developers are responsible for their own code, and they’re supposed to write the tests to do that." is total bullshit. I've seen this happen in multiple environments (big and small) over the years and it always results in crap results. QA/Test engineers are professionals at doing testing and should be testing continuously since day 1. It's nice the developers try to produce good code, but expecting them to be professional QA is ludicrous. My last large iOS app (previous employer) had a crash rate of 0.17% and we had awesome QA people who wouldn't let anything go out the door unless they were happy.

This is a general comment. I am not defending Facebook at all.<p>One of the problems with feedback systems is that they truly fail to present a balanced view of the user or customer base. The people with the motivation and drive to post reviews and feedback in ecosystems such as the App Store and Amazon are those with problems. And so the rating that is produced isn&#x27;t a true reflection of how well an app is received or how good a product might be.<p>We happen to have both a physical product business operating on Amazon and an app business on the Apple App Store. Based on this experience I&#x27;ll say most apps and products receive feedback from 1 out of 500 to 1,000 people who purchase the product. Put another way, the rating figure is based on the opinions of approximately 0.1% of users, if that. And it is also far more likely that the review-posting population is highly biased in favor of people experiencing difficulties.<p>In other words, based on my experience, I think these rating systems that consist of a linear vote count equation are deeply flawed as they fail to capture reality in any measurable way.

For me the one reason I had to uninstall the app and rate it 1 star were the notifications. Most of the notifications that are actually useful you can toggle on&#x2F;off (like receiving a message). However, this particular useless one is not toggleable and occurred at least once a day.<p>Asking me if I know somebody is not a &quot;notification&quot;. My phone should not vibrate or make a noise because Facebook wants to friend more people. There are other annoying notifications, but this is the main one that pisses me off.

Compare this to &#x27;Paper&#x27;, Facebook&#x27;s <i>other</i> iOS app which has 4 stars:<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/paper" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;paper</a><p><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/paper-stories-from-facebook/id794163692?mt=8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;itunes.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;app&#x2F;paper-stories-from-facebook&#x2F;...</a><p>Not only is it a great app, but it&#x27;s also given back to the iOS community in the form of several great open source projects:<p><a href="https://facebook.github.io/origami/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;facebook.github.io&#x2F;origami&#x2F;</a> <a href="https://github.com/facebook/pop" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;facebook&#x2F;pop</a> <a href="http://asyncdisplaykit.org" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;asyncdisplaykit.org</a><p>I find it fascinating that Facebook has two independent iOS efforts, and that while one is clearly better than the other, they seem content to pursue both apps. (Notably, Paper is still not available outside the US–I use Papers personally and can&#x27;t imagine going back to the default app which just feels a bit lifeless in comparison, crashes&#x2F;bugginess aside.)

All these people hate Facebook, but they still use Facebook. How many of those one-star reviews were written by people who <i>still</i> launch the app 20 times a day? What incentive does Facebook really have to change their QA practices?

My 1st guess was forcing everyone to download and use Messenger

The biggest takeaway from this story is &quot;The absence of a specific QA function may be hampering the company as well.&quot; QA is vital. A proper QA department sees the forest and the trees. Developers see the trees (or, in some cases, just the branches). Having proper QA means that John doesn&#x27;t accidentally break something that Julie was working on, because they run regression tests. It&#x27;s quite astonishing that QA isn&#x27;t a separate team at Facebook for their iOS apps.

I noticed a lot of low ratings once Facebook hid the &quot;Most Recent&quot; version of the feed to force you to take 3 steps.<p>Previously they had an easy way of switching between the two all within the first view that showed by default, now it&#x27;s just a pain in the ass and it seems like none of the devs actually use it.

Facebook is clearly a big believer in test automation - to the extent that they do not appear to believe (by their approach and hiring) in manual testing - big mistake imho. Best approach from my point of view is a portfolio approach that includes automation and manual testing.

Facebook has a reputation as a battery hog on iOS.<p><a href="http://www.scottyloveless.com/blog/2014/the-ultimate-guide-to-solving-ios-battery-drain" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scottyloveless.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2014&#x2F;the-ultimate-guide-t...</a><p>I just use the website now. Somehow it manages to offer chat as well as news feed without displacing me to another domain, or whatever is analogous to opening up an entirely separate app.<p>I just don&#x27;t buy that spinning off messenger was good for customers, especially considering they have really failed to create a good experience all around.

I agree completely, the crashes are the #1 problem. In fact its almost unbelievable that such a buggy app could be passed through the app store process (I&#x27;m sure Facebook gets very special treatment with app store reviews, though).<p>One big issue I&#x27;ve noticed is that the app is borderline unusable on older devices (iphone 4). This may explain the huge number of people who are reporting these issues, which certainly happen less on newer devices. I&#x27;ve noticed what looks like a small UI hickup on my 5s will crash the iphone 4.

Interesting facebook doesnt have 2 separate apps. A &quot;stable&quot; version and a &quot;beta&quot; version that people can use. When a beta version runs well enough make that one the stable version. People running a &quot;beta&quot; that has some bugs will be far more forgiving than people running &quot;stable&quot; versions with bugs.

Not providing update notes is the real mind-boggler for me. It is just a giant FU to the users.<p>(Messenger does provide release notes; it&#x27;s just the FB app proper that doesn&#x27;t.)

To be frank, if someone is rating the entire Facebook app as 1-star because they are forced to use the Messenger app, that&#x27;s a bullshit review that I put no stock in.

Btw. I wanted to boost my blog post on facebook. Facebook didn&#x27;t approve it. Reason: &quot;Your ad wasn&#x27;t approved because it includes an improper reference to Facebook&quot;. Wasn&#x27;t facebook all about free speech? <a href="https://twitter.com/mposchenrieder/status/557225783286980608" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;mposchenrieder&#x2F;status&#x2F;557225783286980608</a>