Given what Facebook has set out to accomplish here, I think they actually did a fairly good job. It doesn't look nearly as bad as I expected. But is this something that I find personally appealing as a user? Absolutely not. And I tend to think that most consumers will have a similar response. Even amongst my friends that are heavier Facebook users and running on an Android device, it's hard to imagine any of them switching to this. Well, I can imagine one or two of my friends switching to this, but doing so by accident, and then calling me complaining that they broke their phones.
The reality of the matter is that Facebook already works really well and it's really easy to get to on just about any given mobile phone. We can get more focused notifications pushed to the lock screen or via banners at any point. And more than anything, when I don't want to focus on Facebook or people, it lives in it's own little place, neatly waiting for when I need it next.
But maybe more than anything, I don't think people want to be inundated constantly by the goings-on of their "Facebook friends," because most people have way, way, way more "Facebook friends" than "real friends," and most people only really care about their "real friends." I think this is far more true for the people who have now been out of college for a few years, when the 200 or so "Facebook friends" from high school and the 200-300 more "Facebook friends" from college merge to form a news feed filled with an astonishing amount of utterly useless information. And Facebook changes the way they put the feed together so often, and automatically, that even if you try to use their filters for favorites or whatever they're called, they might automatically start getting assigned to other people you don't care about, or they might just disappear from people you care about, and suddenly you have a news feed populated largely by someone you were never really friends with in high school constantly spamming you to play on their digital farm, because life has been that good to them.
So, okay, it doesn't take much for me to see why I have no interest in this at all personally, and I'd write myself off as an oddball if I didn't hear the same thing more and more these days. Many people I know have gone so far as to delete their accounts. All the teachers have changed their names at the very least, which, by the way, isn't confusing at all when their profile picture is an athlete or a picture of their kid. Many others that have lingered say they only keep it because too many people use it for event invites, but even that's becoming more of an issue in the last year or so as friends that have already quit Facebook start complaining about being excluded.
What all this leads me to think is that Zuck ought to be focusing on rethinking the fundamentals of Facebook so it doesn't become another Myspace as opposed to trying to reinvent smart phone home screens. I think that's a far more pressing issue for Facebook at this point, especially considering that in the last six months, I get the majority of my notifications from bands inviting me to shows or to vote for some song on some website no one but wannabe bands look at now anyways. What does that remind you of???
Whether Zuck will be able to keep Facebook at the forefront of the social media world remains to be seen, but given what I've seen from the company the last few years, it's looking more and more doubtful. I always thought the guy got luckier with Facebook more than anything, though that's not to say he isn't brilliant on many levels. Online social media isn't going away, but in it's short history, we've already seen a lot of turnover. There's no reason to believe Facebook will be exempt from this fate. They're going to have to do a whole lot more than this to stay on top, no doubt about it.
The reality of the matter is that Facebook already works really well and it's really easy to get to on just about any given mobile phone. We can get more focused notifications pushed to the lock screen or via banners at any point. And more than anything, when I don't want to focus on Facebook or people, it lives in it's own little place, neatly waiting for when I need it next.
But maybe more than anything, I don't think people want to be inundated constantly by the goings-on of their "Facebook friends," because most people have way, way, way more "Facebook friends" than "real friends," and most people only really care about their "real friends." I think this is far more true for the people who have now been out of college for a few years, when the 200 or so "Facebook friends" from high school and the 200-300 more "Facebook friends" from college merge to form a news feed filled with an astonishing amount of utterly useless information. And Facebook changes the way they put the feed together so often, and automatically, that even if you try to use their filters for favorites or whatever they're called, they might automatically start getting assigned to other people you don't care about, or they might just disappear from people you care about, and suddenly you have a news feed populated largely by someone you were never really friends with in high school constantly spamming you to play on their digital farm, because life has been that good to them.
So, okay, it doesn't take much for me to see why I have no interest in this at all personally, and I'd write myself off as an oddball if I didn't hear the same thing more and more these days. Many people I know have gone so far as to delete their accounts. All the teachers have changed their names at the very least, which, by the way, isn't confusing at all when their profile picture is an athlete or a picture of their kid. Many others that have lingered say they only keep it because too many people use it for event invites, but even that's becoming more of an issue in the last year or so as friends that have already quit Facebook start complaining about being excluded.
What all this leads me to think is that Zuck ought to be focusing on rethinking the fundamentals of Facebook so it doesn't become another Myspace as opposed to trying to reinvent smart phone home screens. I think that's a far more pressing issue for Facebook at this point, especially considering that in the last six months, I get the majority of my notifications from bands inviting me to shows or to vote for some song on some website no one but wannabe bands look at now anyways. What does that remind you of???
Whether Zuck will be able to keep Facebook at the forefront of the social media world remains to be seen, but given what I've seen from the company the last few years, it's looking more and more doubtful. I always thought the guy got luckier with Facebook more than anything, though that's not to say he isn't brilliant on many levels. Online social media isn't going away, but in it's short history, we've already seen a lot of turnover. There's no reason to believe Facebook will be exempt from this fate. They're going to have to do a whole lot more than this to stay on top, no doubt about it.
