Tag Archives | Facebook

Leave Facebook, Make Your Friends Miserable

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 11, 2010 at 2:04 pm

I have no intention of quitting Facebook, but I just gave it a scare: As part of my research for an upcoming TIME.com column, I clicked on the service’s Deactivate Account link, just to see what would happen.

What happened included a last-ditch effort by Facebook to talk me out of saying goodbye even temporarily–by showing me photos of myself with four other Facebook members, saying they’d (sniff) miss me, and offering to help me send them messages (presumably to explain my irrational decision).

As it happens, I don’t think any of the four individuals Facebook picked would be hugely traumatized by me quitting. They’re all Bay Area locals, and they’re all folks I encounter quite often in person. (I’ve seen three out of five of them within the past five days, come to think of it.) It’s the people I don’t see face to face often–and whom I haven’t seen in decades in some cases–who Facebook is particularly good for keeping up with.

If you want to tug at my heartstrings, Facebook, tell me that my high-school classmates will mourn my departure–if I was flirting with abandoning you, that might make me come back to my senses…

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Facebook’s Promising, Infuriating New Groups Feature

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 7, 2010 at 10:12 am

Facebook rarely fails to be true to its company culture, which is…well, let’s see: Facebook is like a bull that’s constantly breaking things in its own china shop, then repairing the damage after customers complain.

That sure seems to be true with its all-new Groups feature, which is designed to let members create small clusters of friends who can share information and photos, and otherwise interact. Groups can be private or public, and kind of feel like they let you create a Facebook of your own within Facebook.

They’re a swell idea, except:

  • Anyone can add any friend to a Group without permission, and the fact that second person is a member of the Group is public if the Group is public;
  • By default, you’ll get e-mail notifications from the Group, even if it’s a Group you didn’t want to belong to in the first place.

End result: You can find yourself a member of a Group you have absolutely no interest in, or would actively prefer not to be part of. You may also find messages in your in-box from unwanted Groups, even if you’ve otherwise switched Facebook settings to minimize notifications. You can turn off Group notifications, but there’s no way to prevent yourself from being joined to Groups–the best you can do is to un-join yourself once you’ve discovered you’re an unwilling member.

The Business Insider’s Nic Saint has more on all this here. And Hillel Fuld rants about these and other Groups issues in this post.

Facebook could instantly solve Groups’ issues by allowing other people to invite you to a group but not add you to it. I assume it’ll make that switch soon. But I’d love to understand the thought processes that lead the company to so frequently launch worthwhile new features in a way that’s bound to annoy a meaningful number of folks. I can’t quite tell if it’s bad at judging this still, doesn’t care, or likes to turn the knob up to 11 and then ratchet it down based on response from the public.

Odd side note: Groups were announced in a blog post by Mark Zuckerberg titled “Giving You More Control,” but the problem with them is that they don’t give you enough control…

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Facebook: New Groups, Downloadable Data

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 6, 2010 at 12:30 pm

I wasn’t at Facebook’s press event this morning, but the news announced there is significant: a new version of Groups aimed at helping people manage communications with small clusters of friends and family, a way to download everything you ever posted to Facebook as one humongous Zip file, and better tools for keeping tabs on what Facebook apps are doing with your data.

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The “Facebook Phone” I Want is a Facebook iPhone

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 20, 2010 at 1:24 pm

The weekend’s big tech rumor was the possibility that Facebook was working on a Facebook-branded phone of some sort, presumably one with super-tight integration with the social network’s online services. Seems utterly plausible–the scuttlebutt came from decent sources such as TechCrunch and Cnet, and Facebook’s denial was artful rather than comprehensive. Could be cool, too: Joe Hewitt, who’s supposedly working on it, was responsible for the excellent Facebook app for iPhone until he quit that project in disgust over Apple’s App Store policies.

Thinking about Hewitt, though, made me ponder the current state and future of the Facebook iPhone app. It’s seen some tweaks since he left for less restrictive pastures, but nothing radical. And there’s just a ton of undone stuff left that could make Facebook better on an iPhone.

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University to Students: No Facebook, Twitter for A Week

Posted by Ed Oswald on September 14, 2010 at 11:15 am

The provost of Harrisburg University of Science and Technology is taking an unusual step to teach his students a lesson on how social media is impacting their lives: he has banned both Facebook and Twitter on campus for an entire week. Provost Eric Darr doesn’t look like he’s anti-technology, rather he believes that students may take these technologies for granted.

“Often, there are behaviors or habits, ways that we use technology that we may ourselves not even be able to articulate because we’re not aware of them,” he told the NPR in an interview. “If someone feels the need to borrow their friend’s phone to go check Facebook, it’ll be interesting to ask the question at the end of the week: Why did you feel the need to do that? What compelled you to do that?”

Students off campus would still be able to access these sites as the ban only is for the on-campus network. Those with smart phones would still be able to access these social networking sites while at the school. But again, Darr wants students to try to live without it. Could be a good idea — do today’s kids rely on social networking too much?

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Facebook More Popular than Google

Posted by Ed Oswald on September 10, 2010 at 10:36 am

The need to check up with friends on Facebook is becoming so great that as a whole we’re spending more time on Facebook than any other online destination, comScore reported this week. A total of 41.1 million minutes or 9.9 percent of consumer’s online time were spent on the site in August, surpassing time spent on Google which came in with 39.8 million minutes or 9.6 percent.

It shouldn’t be all too surprising that the social networking site has come out on top. Facebook’s user experience invites the user to spend an extended period of time on the site, whether it be posting statuses, playing games, or creeping on other’s profiles.

Google doesn’t have that. All we come to do there is search and get out, really. There currently is not much there to keep us, so its more of a passthrough than a destination per se. It should be noted that Google’s other sites — including Gmail and YouTube —  were apparently included in the numbers but that still wasn’t enough.

Even more interesting than the race between Google and Facebook is Yahoo’s own fall from grace. In the same study taken last year, Yahoo had 12 percent of user’s online time, versus only five percent each for Google or Facebook. This year, that has fallen to 9.1 percent in the current survey.

I know at least in my own usage, my Facebook time far outweighs any time I spent on Google. I could also arguably say I spent more time on Twitter that Google, too. What sites are you using the most?

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Ping-Pong: Facebook, iTunes Still Talking

Posted by Ed Oswald on September 2, 2010 at 1:52 pm

Kara Swisher reports that Facebook blocked Apple from accessing its API after the Cupertino company failed to reach an agreement with the social networking service over Ping, and then proceeded to attempt to use the APIs anyway. Facebook allows free access to its APIs unless its a potential drain on resources. iTunes has 160 million plus potential Pingers — obviously no small change. There is a chance Facebook integration could still happen: Kara’s sources say the two companies are still talking.

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Facebook Tries to Trademark the Word "Face"

Posted by Ed Oswald on August 27, 2010 at 12:28 pm

Facebook appears to be getting much more aggressive in protecting its brand, even going as far as attempting to trademark the word “face,” documents indicate. The company took over another application for the common word from UK company CIS Internet Limited.

Their application was filed in 2005 by that company, and TechCrunch’s Erick Shonfeld suspects CIS transferred the application to FaceBook around November 2008. Around this time the social networking site’s lawyers began to deal with the US Patent and Trademark Office over the application.

All is not smooth sailing — Facebook is getting opposition to the attempt from a familiar face. Aaron Greenspan was a classmate of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and last year successfully settled with the social networking company over his claims to being part of Facebook’s initial development.

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One Big Reason Why Facebook Places Beats Foursquare: Clarity of Identity

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 19, 2010 at 11:10 am

So Facebook has begun rolling out Places, its answer to Foursquare, Gowalla, MyTown, and every other mobile service that lets you broadcast your location by checking into local businesses and other locations. So far, I have only partial access: I can see friends who have checked in, but can’t check in myself.

Until now, the location service I’ve used most often has been Foursquare. I have fun with it. But I’ve also found it frustrating in one major way which I believe Places will address–it’s often unclear just who people on Foursquare are.

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