People are saying that 2009 was the year of Facebook.
What people? I don't know - people. Lots of geeks and nerds and media commentators and hacks who have to fill space in magazines and podcasts.
I've loved using it, it's been one of the first pages I visit when I go online.
And yet....is it me or....has Facebook stopped working properly for a while? For several months the news feed keeps falling out of synch - status updates and whatnots which were posted weeks ago suddenly appearing at the top, as if new.
My own posts also seem to have disappeared, reappeared, gone walkabout, god knows.
If this sort of shoddy performance was happening at the start, would we have kept using it?
Then there's been all the recent hoohaa about privacy settings. Someone remind Zuckerburg that we all signed up because we could get in touch with friends privately. Now this billionaire wants to turn our profiles, posts, pics, et al into publicly searchable material.
And it would seem that many people still don't get that those games and quizzes they take part in are just a way that Facebook can sell information about you to advertisers, and not just information about you, but about your friends.
This means each time some dimwit I went to school with decides to test his/her knowledge of 1980s album covers, they'll telling big fucking goddamn corporations a little bit about me, too.
So I'm starting to get a bit fed up with it. And Facebook may be closing in on 500 million members, but that doesn't mean they can't just as easily bugger off. Anyone remember MySpace?
It would have sounded insane at the beginning of the year, but could we soon be saying that 2009 was the year Facebook broke?
Monday, December 28, 2009
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3 comments:
If Facebook was launched now, with all the technical problems it has, it would stuggle to get 500 users, never mind 500 million
I couldn't agree more. I liked the simple functionality of the first itteration, but (and as with all things unfortunately) the desire to grow means more product extensions, that means focus is taken away from the main product offering, in turn, we are left with something that we still want to like, but that never bloody works anymore! I had to post my status via the bloody iPhone as nothing basic worked. But (and I work in media) if I wanted to sell you Zoosk dating, I'll bet you that I'd get a response in a heartbeat!
Myspace only survived the Murdoch buyout because Google bought all the ads! Otherwise all the bollocks about UDC (User generated content - the big buzz of 07/08) was irrelevant. Forums have been around for years and ads in forums have the lowest response rate around - because users are in there to talk to their friends!!!
Really, I give up and yet it pays my bills!
UGC is a bunch of crap
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