News of Edward

So is it just me or is Facebook getting worse and worse? It was great when it was college only. I remember waiting until I got to Berklee and being excited that I could finally use it. Then they opened to high school. Then the world. Now there are apps, forced mini feeds, chat and other useless shit to try and make it customizable. Art Lebedev said it well when he said to the effect of “When you give users too many options, they will make really bad design.” It’s so damn true. So let me break it down for you how i did in my head.

• Facebook wants to make money: Fine.
• Facebook needs ads to make money: Fine, a lot of people do. It’s how we enjoy the amount of stuff there is on the net. It’s like internet tax for us.
• More people, more clicks on ads, more money: Makes sense, it’s greedy seeing as they have enough, but ok whatever.

Here’s where it stops. It was a closed system. Exclusivity creates a really good community in my opinion. And it’s the good kind of exclusivity. Facebook is (or should I say was) only discriminating against non-college attendance. Big deal. Our society encourages people to go to college. Good for Facebook for giving a great reason to be in college. But they fucked it up. They had to open it. High school students are less mature, have a different community and it wasn’t a good place for them. I speak from experience. High school was entirely different than college is. I was less mature, didn’t know a lot about socializing in the way I know now, and had worse judgement (not to mention 0 to none design skills.)

Why do I care? I want to keep in touch with my friends. Facebook got that god damn right. Here’s a free, easy way to keep in touch with your friends. Even after college. Organize events, spread information within a community. But now, it’s just a brooding ground for wasted time and energy with some social networking features to center it self.

Maybe someone will do it right and keep it right. That might be too much to ask, not everyone is Google. I just hope I can avoid the “additions” and “features” they seem so hot to add long enough for me to do my own thing.

This was for my Project 1 of my MS-381 class. Tongue and cheek at the time. A little more applicable now.
Facebook Public Service Announcement - Stop Facebook Apps.