AH: Did applications ruin Facebook?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=727346

by matthewer • 17 years ago

5 6 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Here is my take: I used to really enjoy FB. It was a fantastic way to connect with friends - simple and easy. Once they began to introduce applications, everything got much more complex and cluttered. I am not some luddite - this is Hacker News after all.

I think connect is a solid step in the right direction, but the applications have to go.

Your thoughts?

tokenadult• 17 years ago

I detest seeing friends' quiz notifications in my Facebook feed, so I block each quiz as I see it, have had to unfriend one friend who seemed to post nothing else, and continually post links to all my friends about how nefarious Facebook quizzes are. That helps all my smarter friends learn to spread the word to their friend networks about how uncool it is to take Facebook quizzes.

The latest concern is all those nasty ads on Facebook.

http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/07/facebook-ad-endorsements/

pasbesoin• 17 years ago

Perhaps I will try that.

After the last major redesign, I found and continue find the enhanced emphasis on graphics -- e.g. larger profile thumbnails and whatnot -- distracting; I find it isn't as easy to quickly scan the page.

I've idly thought a time or two of using a filter to block the thumbnail images. This thread made me think to try simply blocking all images. Result: A page much easier for me to scan. And while the quiz results are still there, their annoying graphics are not.

Mind you, I like seeing my friends published photos, and sometimes a friendly profile thumbnail cheers me up. But the rest is mostly visual busy-ness that slows me down.

As for the personal images in ad's, there's a way to effectively opt out of that, now. I believe it was mentioned here on HN. In Facebook, it's under

Settings / Privacy / News Feed and Wall / Facebook Ads

Set the value of Appearance in Facebook Ads to "No one".

HalcyonMuse• 17 years ago

I hate the notifications, too, so I've set my feed to show status updates only by default. Occasionally, I'll switch to the links or notes view to see what's trickling around, since I usually miss these in news feed mode anyway.

makecheck• 17 years ago

I liked apps when I could put them anywhere on my front page and have fine-grained control over their access to my information.

When apps were demoted to a 2nd tab, and access control became "all or nothing", I basically stopped using them.

blasdel• 17 years ago

You're absolutely right, the original apps implementation totally blew up in their faces.

Through regular redesigns, they've slowly been clawing their way back to decency. The twitterification' that has banished apps from your wall page was a nice step, but the further emphasis on the news feed (which I don't use, but others seem to intensely) makes the quiz bullshit prominent.

From their actions, the people in charge at Facebook seem to know how much apps have shit all over them. I think they'll continue to recover from it.

ashely• 17 years ago

i think chatting is complicated on face book caus even though my friends are on line and both of us try to chat togther but its imposibble and my laptop isent crap i have tried it on many coputers my friend to

AH: Did applications ruin Facebook?

Related Stories