In the meandering, ever-changing saga that is Facebook’s user experience, once again the mammoth social network made some abrupt changes without warning to its community.
On April 1st, Facebook changed their rules again and unleashed “community pages,” in an asinine attempt to “simplify” the already confusing issue of Pages vs. Groups.
This was not an April Fool’s joke, either.
The goal of this new “feature” is to weed out the unofficial brand pages from all the “official” ones on the network, and retain fan pages specifically for businesses, brands, public figures and official spokespeople for any of them. For example, if one wanted to make a page for a random cause or to make a statement, it would fall into the “community pages” category. Once the community page hit a certain amount of users, Facebook would hand admin privileges over to the community, thus creating a Wiki-like platform.
In every past instance of Facebook making big changes, users have protested within the network by creating hundreds of “Bring Back the Old Facebook” groups and even a few pages. However, this time there appears to be very little protesting in the social network by the addition of “community pages.”
Not because users don’t want to, but because they can’t figure out how.
“I don’t like it at all. I wish they’d bring back the old Facebook, and so do all my friends,” said Sarah Jones, a die-hard “Bring Back the Old Facebook” online protester who admins several groups. “I’d start another protest on Facebook but I can’t figure out if I should make a page, a group, or now one of these new community pages!”
Others are more suspicious of Facebook’s motives.
“I think it’s a conspiracy, Facebook is trying to confuse us so that we can’t protest all the change,” said one Facebook user and avid Obama supporter who declined to be named.
Indeed, as of this writing there are a few anti-community pages fan pages, but none have any more than three fans.
To make matters worse, Facebook also decided they are soon going to replace the “Become a Fan” button on fan pages with a “Like” button, citing better conversion on the “Like” feature within the network and increasing engagement without implication of commitment.
“I’m not a fan of removing the ‘become a fan’ button, and I don’t like the idea of just having a ‘Like’ button. Would fan pages become ‘Like’ pages?” asked one concerned Facebook protester, “I was going to make an anti-Like Button page but it wouldn’t even have ‘fans’ anyway… now I can’t figure out if it should be an anti-Like button group or page or community page to protest removing the ‘become a fan’ button AND the addition of the community pages!”
Many users have said they’re giving up and going back to MySpace, but are wary, as they got lost on the way to Facebook the last time.
It is uncertain what Facebook will decide to change next, but one thing is certain: They’ve finally found a way to quiet all the noise of whiny protesters within their network.
Image via Blackrage.org.
8 Comments
Join the conversation and post a comment.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
- Don’t fish in my friends and I won’t pee in your pool. | that damn redhead - [...] everybody’s having their usual post-Facebook-changes anyeurism, where they kick and scream about a service they don’t pay for making ...
Leave a Comment
Please donate!
Obligatory Buttons:
Blown Away by Carrie Underwood
Twitter Comment
@damnredhead Good stuff here: [link to post] Facebook changes again, protesters can’t figure out how to complain.
– Posted using Chat Catcher
I hate the fact that all of the pages you like? You can’t hid them.. they are out there for everyone to see. There are no privacy settings you can change to make your interests only show up to your friends. And Facebook tells us that seeing all of your liked pages is “not identifying”. Phooey!!!
The whole point to this craziness is that users have no say! None what so ever! While this might not make sense to most people, myself included, it’s clear that Zuckey Burger and his crew are going to roll however which way they please…Well that’s just what I think…he’s obviously got a vision for it and won’t let some user groups alter his course.
<cite>Many users have said they’re giving up and going back to MySpace,</cite>
(shudders) I for one am not going back to Myspace. Whenever I think of Myspace, I’m reminded of Weird Al’s video “White & Nerdy” where he talks about how people are begging for his top 8 spaces. If you watch the video though, you can see how hideously ugly his page is.
@Abel- Sometimes I wonder if privacy is a generational issue. I have friends in their mid to late 30s who refuse to have a Facebook account, because they don’t want people to know about their lives. In contrast, my brother in law in his early 20s has no reservations sharing everything that he and his friends are doing.
The biggest problem with Facebook is this just sucks your time away, sometimes… Take a quick look and annexing and no voice an entire hour
Yeah, I hate how FB’s defaults are usually not what you want, but it’s hard to dig around and find the right place to change them! They really don’t make it easy on us, so I’d love to see some regulation or something to force them into the right direction.
<a href=”http://aworkingmom.com” title=”Work at Home Moms”>A Working Mom</a>
WOah, facebook nowadays have really been a hit already. Yes to some point facebook becomes boring but with the hundreds of applications it has you can take a very good use of your time.
No matter how those people protest, they would still surely log in to it,. LOL
Keep updating and modify our technology because it cultivates our culture and enhance our technology. So there’s nothing wrong for changing the settings on facebook. The only problem is the end-users. hehehe