This morning you probably went through your typical routine. You woke up, brushed your teeth, combed your hair, and checked your Facebook, which probably resulted in a mini crisis. After you scratch your head a couple times you text your best friend and complain about how your whole day is now thrown off.
This week Mark Zuckerberg announced that the Facebook we all know and love is undergoing a few changes that will help to increase user engagement and member sharing, and some people aren't happy about it. The real question is why are we so upset by these recent changes? Before I dive into that question, let’s take a look at just a few of Facebook’s recent changes:
- developing new ways to share music/video with friends and even watch TV by teaming up with third-party websites like VEVO and Hulu
- a new, smaller scrolling news feed on the right side of the screen (similar to a Twitter feed)
- an updated homepage layout
- a blue corner on stories in your news feed that Facebook “thinks" you will find interesting
- you will soon be able to do more than just “like” a friend's picture or status. Soon you will be able to click "watched" on a video, "listened" to a song, and a plethora of other verbs.
Some believe that Facebook has made these recent changes in in a reactionary move to all the hype surrounding Google+, which has been toted with bearing much more user friendly, functional utilities.
There have been mixed emotions when it comes to these changes, which can be seen all over blogs, Twitter, and ironically, Facebook itself. Some argue that they are pushing the envelope even further when it comes to privacy and security. Although, security and privacy concerns seem to be outweighed by the sheer fact that people just don’t like change.
It's understandable that in a world of rapidly changing technology and social media outlets, that it's important to stay relevant, fresh and innovative. Although, I think it can be argued that even though change is good, maybe not all at once. Facebook is a website that most of us use on a daily basis and by changing so much, so fast, it's bound to upset a few people. It has yet to be seen if this was a smart move on Facebook's part.
The following is a video of Mark Zuckerberg unveiling one of Facebook's newest features at the F8 Conference in San Francisco earlier this week.
What is your take on the recent Facebook Facelift? Do you think these changes are a smart move for their business, or will too many changes deter people from using?
Facebook does constantly make changes without so much as a "Hey, we're planning on moving things around a little." Their strategy seems to be to change things all at once and let people deal with it (throw them in the deep end and hope they can follow a steep learning curve). Clearly people are frustrated. Still, I'm not sure the problem is the change itself. Things change and that's life and people are used to it.
ReplyDeleteWhat seems to irritate everyone is the fact that there is no warning; like when they unsecured the site, changing from htts to http. Even though they want to protect their ideas from competitors like Google+, they need to be more open with what they are up to. Are they afraid they can't grow ideas at the same rate as competitors?
I really don't know how I feel about it. I'm all for change but with time I will get used to this new set up. As Sybil said, we are used to having Facebook change things on us overnight so its no surprise.
ReplyDeleteAs of right now, I find the mini twitter feed annoying because it is right above my chat list. I feel like the two are combined or something.
I read something where it was like "how dare they change the format of a free site we subscribe." Change happens and it needs to happen to keep up with the world we live in...especially the tech world. Around the 20th time we sign in to Facebook, I'm sure we will have forgotten the changes.
ReplyDeleteFor whatever reason, the Facebook changes have never bothered me. A lot of my friends get riled up about it and it seems like every time there's a new update, someone else is planning on "quitting" Facebook. I just can't seem to invest that much time into it. I'm usually not all for change all the time, but with Facebook and other social media outlets, I seem to embrace it a lot easier.
ReplyDeleteI still haven't quite gotten over Facebook's first facelift. It's true that the Facebook team members need to continually change the structure of the website or they wouldn't be doing their jobs, but surely they can have come up with a better platform by now. It seems every time they make a change the site becomes less efficient (most notably as of recent the pictures take very long to load, and I have no idea what is going on with Facebook chat anymore). I assume they would have appealed to the millions of users worldwide and found a design that is more user-friendly.
ReplyDelete