Day: March 24, 2009
Facebook Responds to Users’ Feedback
Facebook has been through several redesigns since it first came out. The old design was very clean and simple, which made me attracted to join the social network when I first found out about it.
When Facebook revamped its website with a new design, many users complained about it. They didn’t like this, they didn’t like that. On the other hand, many users did like it. Then after some time, Twitter, another social networking plus micro-blogging site, became popular. Facebook, again, decided to redesign their homepage resembling their micro-blogging design.
Again, many users disliked it while other users liked it. You simply can never satisfy everyone.
Comments, complaints, requests and suggestions were aired out by users, so Facebook responded with a list of improvements they’re making as written by Chris Cox, Facebook’s Director of Product, on Facebook’s blog today:
Live updating: One of the most common requests is the ability to see your stream update automatically. We will be adding the ability to turn on auto updating in the near future so you no longer need to refresh the page.- Photo tags: In order to surface more photos you might like to see, we’ll be adding photos tagged of your friends to the stream. This will happen in the coming weeks.
- More choices for applications: We’ve heard feedback that there is a lot of application content appearing in the stream. We will be giving you tools to control and reduce application content that your friends share into your stream.
- More Highlights: Highlights will update more frequently and will show you more content throughout the day to mirror more closely the content that the earlier News Feed provided.
- Find things more easily: Friend requests and event invites will be more prominent at the top of right column. Also, from the filters on the left, you will be able to create a new list of friends with which to filter the stream.
I’ve encountered quite a few friends of mine who didn’t like the latest Facebook design. Well, some of them I’ve told about how Facebook seemingly decided to pattern it to Twitter’s layout. Most of those who haven’t used Twitter, of course, cannot relate.
I understand that this makes them upset about the Facebook situation. Why fix what isn’t broken, right? Everyone is entitled to their own opinion on this matter. For me, I’m glad that Facebook listened to my suggestion, that is, to have the automatic stream updating. Thanks and I’ll be looking forward to that, Facebook.
Facebook and Me
Facebook is a social networking website that allows you to connect with friends, co-workers, and other people whom you share common interests with. There are four types of networks that users can join: city, workplace, school, and region. Sending messages, posting on friends’ walls, and updating personal profiles are a few of the things users can do in order to let friends know about themselves.
I’ve been a member of Facebook since early 2007. It was an aunt of mine who mentioned that website to me and my sister. “You should get on Facebook,” she said when I was still new here in Canada in 2006. I initially didn’t know what it was, and then I found out that it was a website comparable to Friendster. I was more familiar with Friendster then since it was the popular networking site that was used in the Philippines, where I originally came from.
At first I was thinking: I don’t know if I want to join another social networking site. I also have MySpace but I don’t really use it. I only joined it at first because I think I got an invitation to join from a friend. That one is pretty much useless to me. I get a whole lot of invitations to join other social networking sites as well, so I usually just ignore them. I don’t think they’re all going to be very useful to me.
I decided to check out Facebook and it looked pretty decent to me. I liked the layout and features since it was very clean and simple; it was so different from Friendster and MySpace. And so I joined. I only had about ten or so friends on Facebook at that time (not including relatives) but I was okay with that.
I checked out the features and saw that there was this Groups. Hmm, I thought, maybe I should start a group for my school. Then and there I started the University of St. La Salle – Integrated School group. It was where I went to school during my grade school and high school years. I invited my friends who were already on Facebook and sent email invitations as well to those who weren’t on the site yet.
2002 was the year I graduated from high school, thus, I only knew the email addresses of those from my batch. I did a little research to find the group email addresses of other batches so I could send them an email invitation to join as well.
My high school classmate, who was on Facebook already, also started a University of St. La Salle group which is aimed to gather all those who went to our school from pre-school until college/university. I made him an admin on the group I created and vice versa.
Little by little, our groups started gathering more members. As of this writing, the USLS-IS group now has 800+ members and the USLS group has 1,000+ members. Compared to the actual number of students who studied in our school, I know we’re still far off, but well, at least we were able to create a venue for current students, alumni, and teachers to get and stay connected with each other.
This is the story of how my love for Facebook started.
Tech-Life in Pink 