Facebook: Specific Beefs

Dear Facebook,

I tend to rant and complain when you change things so I feel it's only fair to tell you specifically what's wrong. It's not like we have a relationship (you are, after all, either a corporation or a web app, depending on how I'm dealing with you at the moment), but at least I can clear the air.

My biggest beef? I do not want you (or anyone else) doing my thinking for me! I pick my clothes out in the morning, I drive myself to work in MoPac traffic, I function well in a high tech environment. I am confident I can decide when I want to update what appears on my web page.

The two biggest components of this are:

1) Don't select what you think I want to see. Let me decide.
2) Don't take away my choices.

As it turns out, these interact quite a bit in what you have done with your user interface. For instance, until recently I had the option of selecting "top stories" (you do my thinking for me), or status updates, or photo updates, or links, or various other things. You had previously made that easier to select, but at least most of the options I cared about were still there somewhere prior to the last overhaul. Now, I have them on my phone, but not on my computer.

99% of the time, I just want to see status updates. NEARLY ALL OF THEM. When there are exceptions, I can hide the posts or even hide the individuals for a while if they were being annoying. At least, I used to be able to do this. Now I'm not so sure. I can either hide individual posts, or I can "Unsubscribe from posts by [someone]". What does that last part even mean? Is it different from hiding them? Hiding them made sense without having to go look up your definition. You took something simple and made it complex. Bad move.

Don't decide when I want things to move. I will decide that by clicking on "more" or "older posts" or whatever you choose to call it this week. It really annoys me to be trying to read something, and suddenly it jerks away. Or my web browser freezes while God alone knows (because I doubt even you know) what your javascript, PHP and CSS/HTML is doing to decide how to update my screen. It's even worse when it does this WHILE I AM TRYING TO COMMENT. I spent years in software development and user interface design and implementation; this is as broken as it gets. Even Microsoft is smarter than this. (Did I just say that? Yes, I did.)

The same thing applies to the scrolling news feed. If I wanted a scrolling news feed I'd have asked for one. Not all of us have Blue Gene systems, or multiple 6 core i7 based computers. We want less animation and background processing, thank you.

In with all of this is something I especially loathe, the tendency to update the page every time it's uncovered or exposed in some fashion. I can decide for myself when I want to update, remember? If you really, really think that is absolutely a necessity, then please give me some control. Preferably an opt out, but at least a minimum update frequency.

Then there are the lists I never created, that you decided I must have wanted but was too stupid or lazy to create. I already have groups. I am quite capable of putting people in the groups I want them in. I don't need you to invent them for me. In the process of creating the lists, you (yet again) took away screen real estate.

Speaking of groups, that's beef #3.

3) Don't destroy what I've done!

You not only decided to turn group pages into something completely different, you decided that some groups would be archived instead. The lucky ones who got converted instead of archived would still lose all their members unless you jump through hoops. What screwed up government program inspired this?

4) Do not require my entire screen (or even more than some people have).

Your default layout wastes a lot of screen space. Please use proportional widths, not large fixed widths based on today's sales figures for flat panels. Lots of folk are still happily using screens that are several years old, far narrower than today's state of the art standard.

Merge this with the whole concept of choices, and you could make life sooo much better for your users. Feel free to keep coming up with cool widgets. But let the users pick and choose which widgets they want, and (within reason) where they go. While they don't do it perfectly, blogspot at least gets the concept, and they really do a rather good job with it (other than some width restrictions).

5) Enough with the popups and overlays!

Just use the tab or window that's already in use! And links should go to another page, period; no javascript or other weirdness is necessary. That way I, the user, can decide whether I want things in the same window/tab or another one. Now, when I middle click to open a birthday in another tab, I get a massive fail because you wanted a left click to create a popup. But the way I do it is how every other thing I use on the web works. Get over yourself. Your mission is not to redefine how people mouse click. (I know, your mission is to sell ads. But the social network is how you accomplish that, so please at least pretend it's the mission!)

There's more, but these are my big beefs at the moment.

Oh, wait. There's one more.

6) Don't make it so difficult to communicate with you.

It's almost impossible. This is true whether it's UI feedback, a technical problem, or trying to find out why one is locked out for some mysterious, secret concept of misbehavior. I'd have been happy to discuss this privately. But since you not only insist on breaking things but on making it nearly impossible to speak directly with you, I'll just tell the world.

Have a great day, Seriously. But please, help your users have one, too.