Has Facebook Jumped the Shark?
I can’t say that I agree with this one 100%, but it certainly is an interesting rant - over at the Industry Interactive, Inc. blog is a post titled "Facebook has failed us (or Facebook is like so Web 1.0)".
J Lane writes that Facebook is lame because the Facebook apps "suck" and it "does the peripheral activities poorly." Mostly, his arguments against Facebook are of the walled-garden variety…not enough integration with outside services - just do everything on Facebook. That is, photos on Facebook are photos on Facebook…you don’t import your flickr pics, you can’t integrate with Picasa. Email on Facebook is email on Facebook - it’s not "real" email.
To quote:
Facebook is pretty good for the beginners, but fails for people like me. There is no way that I’m going to upload photos to two separate places. Having to choose between Flickr and Facebook? Sorry Facebook, you lose. Having to pick between responding to comments on my imported Facebook notes, or comments posted on my blog? Sorry Facebook, you lose again.
It’s redundancy that’s the issue. What purpose does Facebook serve now that our online lives are aggregated into one big lifestream? What do I see in my mini-feed that I didn’t already see in my FriendFeed? An imported blog note? A status update? Everyone has already integrated their Facebook status with Twitter! A photo? I saw it on flickr last week when you uploaded it. So is Facebook turning into a place to throw zombies at each other and write "happy birthday" on people’s walls? Maybe it’s fun to join groups, but are you joining just to join or are you participating?
What has Facebook done for you lately?
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Facebook is definitely losing. It seems it may only be relevant (yet again) to college students that depend on it for networking at school. Since I’ve taken a semester off from school, I rarely update Facebook or check for updates on Facebook. I go weeks now without visiting the site and couldn’t care less. Though, I know that when I get back to school I’ll be all over it again and wishing that the college needs that Facebook meets could be developed on Twitter or FriendFeed. Facebook definitely has the college group on lock.
That’s kind of what I thought, but it’s been a long time since I was in school…and we didn’t have Facebook back then. I feel old now..sigh…
Not much I say. It does let me interact with a few people who aren’t really into the internet stuff since “even” they got into it at some stage. But then, those who aren’t really into the internet social interactions don’t tend to use the facebook enough anyways.
I think it is useful for a little while for beginners as mentioned in the quote, but I think you were spot on when you said that the redundancy is the issue.
This is exactly why I love FriendFeed and Facebook on my BlackBerry.
FriendFeed is exactly what the Facebook news feed should be.
Facebook on my BlackBerry receives all friend requests/wall posts/messages/events instantly and I can deal with them right away.
There’s absolutely no reason to visit the site except to waste time.
Facebook? lol that’s a pure crap service. I never understood why it got so popular. Seriously, I mean I hate being “poked” or be “transformed into a werewolf”… It IS web 1.0. No customization option? WTF even MySpace does it.
Right no the only true social network which is both Web 2.0 and very opened in terms of customization is Yahoo! Mash. It does not receive the credits it deserves.
Besides Facebook’s policy is ridiculous. The translation is aweful and nobody is going to tell me that they can’t pay professional translators. Of course… I’m not talking abiout privacy issues…
I mean seriously how can one claim to truly share something on Facebook? You guys have all the same page!!! where’s the individuality in here??
Yeah, I took a pretty hard-nosed stance on it in that post. I’ve become increasingly irritated by the fact that instead of improving integration and moving towards Web 2.0 bliss, Facebook has taken the opposite approach and opted to build a bunch of half-baked features.
I LOVE the idea of FriendFeed, but unfortunately it doesn’t have the user mass for me yet. I think that one of the coolest features is that you can create “imaginary friends”, so if my buddy Steve hasn’t signed up for the service yet, I can still create a Steve and add in all of his feeds. I can’t, however do a search on FriendFeed and find that guy I went to high school with 15 years ago.