
Ask HN: What Sucks About Facebook? - bl4k
The web tore through Friendster, Orkut, MySpace etc. Will Facebook be next, and if so, when? I realized that time was up for MySpace when I wasn't using it, and when people I knew where not using it. That gap was plugged by Facebook rather quickly, and it spread like a weed. Is Facebook still vulnerable? It would have been impossible to imagine MySpace dying the way it has, but it happen.<p>I now realize that I no longer use Facebook. I am there, but I rarely login anymore. Instead of listing my reasons, I wold prefer to hear from HN what they think sucks about Facebook. I spoke to some 'average users' and got some feedback from them as well, and it seems that Facebook could be a fad. So HN, Facebook: The next Google or MySpace and why?
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audyyy
I deleted mine a few days ago. Hopefully I'll make it through the 14-days
where I can re-activate.

## My Facebook Rants:

* __Friends__ - A social network should just sense the people you're interested in and give updates accordingly. This would do away with your creepy co-worker demanding that you be his/her "friend." You wouldn't have to delete, and offend, that kid that you never spoke to in the 5th grade. In fact, Facebook kind of requires that its users adopt a kind of 5th grade mentality towards social interaction. "Will you be my girlfriend?"

OkCupid gets this part right. You can add people as friends but updates from
people you've recently stalked show up in your feed automatically. If OkCupid
wasn't a dating-oriented site, it wouldn't make a bad social networking site.

* __The e-mails__ - I block Facebook emails on gmail. There really should be a way to opt-out of this. It's annoying.

* __Tagging__ - This seemed neat at first and was what probably made Facebook popular in the Facebook but it was a mistake. When I had Facebook, I just blocked anyone from seeing pictures I was tagged in. If I went to a party or something; I would avoid cameras because I didn't want to have to worry about a picture of me drinking and playing dice in an alley to show up on my wall.

* __Vendor Lock-In__ - You can't download your own profile pictures, status updates, etc without the use of some ephemeral 3rd party tool that probably won't exist for very long.

* __The 14-day re-activation period__ - I quit smoking after 6 years; it was easier.

(Just pretend that HN supports markdown :)

~~~
iaskwhy
I believe Facebook is the most amazing social interaction thing ever made so I
kind have this need to correct some of the things you said, sorry!

Friends: If you reject someone from being your friend they are not informed
about it but, if they are smart enough, they can check your profile page and
see if they can add you again; you can also block that person and he won't be
able to ask to be your friend again; I think this is almost perfect, the only
problem I see here is the word "friend". You can accept someone and add that
person to a list which will make that person unable to see anything if you
want to while still being "friends". Oh, you can also just forget about
accepting friendships you don't want to have, the person asking for it will
know you still didn't accept him but that's about it.

Emails: You can disable all email notifications (or toggle most of them off
leaving the most important on, it's really well done) going to "My Account",
"Notifications" tab.

Tagging: You can make your default friends' settings restrict things like
seeing photos. If you want some of them to see those photos you can add them
to a list where you let them see photos.

Vender Lock-In: I'm not sure about this but didn't Open Social just solve this
problem?

------
jacquesm
I think social networks are cyclic because they have a 'fashion' element to
them. Whereever the 'hip' people are that's where the rest will follow. So
once the 'hip' people (some would say the trend-setters) move out their
groupies will follow.

Of course after that it's a long way down that hill that you can literally
shoot up on but I don't think there ever will be a permanent social network.
It's more like a locust thing. And hip people will always be on the move, if
only because they really can't be seen eating in the same restaurant that
every other person eats at, so they'll go and discover a new joint that nobody
else has heard of or a new style of wearing their hair, their jeans or their
baseball caps. It's a fashion thing.

~~~
wangwei
I do agree with you. But if you view it this way, are't most systems cyclic?
companies, economic boom and burst. Even America might fall one day after its
peak. The important question is how long the cycle is. Previous social
networks have never gained such mainstream adoption and user participation as
Facebook have. Facebook might fall one day, but my bet is that it's gonna take
longer than you anticipated. Everything is a fashion thing, essentially (even
religions).

~~~
jacquesm
The interval between shifts seems to be lengthening, I think this is due to
the increased effectiveness of the predominant social network du jour to
exploit network effects. Maybe that alone will be enough to counter the
'fashion' factor but I don't think we're there yet.

And sure, everything is eventually cyclic (well, almost everything) but I mean
cyclic on a measurable (say 10 years) time-scale, not something geological.

------
harscoat
Great answer (by google engineer) to your question
[http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-
networ...](http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-network-v2)

~~~
bl4k
I just finished going through that, thanks a lot for the link - and excellent
presentation.

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insomniasexx
In my opinion, Facebook has some time left but not much. I would guess that a
new site will take over within the next 12 months. The transition will be
similar to the one we saw a few years back when everyone made the shift from
Myspace to Facebook.

Even though I am 20 and in college and am friends with everyone I know in real
life, everyone I knew growing up and from summer camps, and many of my
internet friends as well, I rarely go on anymore. It used to be a daily
activity.

What went wrong? I think it just became so popular, had so many people that it
wasn't not interesting anymore. We all have a little hipster in us - once
everyone you know and their mother and their grandmother is using something,
it starts to lose its appeal.

Lastly, Facebook had too much change. They could have updated it once or twice
with fairly big changes and been fine. I noticed that I hated hearing about
facebook or going on facebook when they were rolling out new privacy
agreements and rearranging the site layout once a week.

There is a big potential for anyone developing the next social networking
site. Who knows what aspects will make it popular though.

------
HeyLaughingBoy
I actually like Facebook and don't have any complaints that come to mind.
Perhaps demographic has something to do with it: I'm an engineer in my
mid-40's who spends a fair amount of time online. But I got an account because
of a very non-technical friend who used it to share pictures and anecdotes
about her life. I log onto FB about 1-2 times a week for around 10 minutes
each, so I'm not a heavy user. I'm using it mostly to keep in touch with
people I haven't seen since college, or friends who live a long distance away
that I don't talk to often. And for that it works really well.

I don't care about FB privacy because really, there's nothing there that I
worry about getting out. My friends are pretty boring :-)

------
tomwalker
I think a powerful part of Facebook is the photosharing operation - I believe
it is the biggest photosharing site on the web now. Without it I think it
could die off quicker.

I myself have been using the site less and less over the last 6 months but I
still log in at least daily.

I think it will be a generation gap that will end it- people in their early
teens will not want to be on the same social networking site as their mothers
and fathers!

------
coryl
IMO Facebook is too big and real to be a fad. That doesn't mean that they can
be taken over one day by another service, but they are managed very well
(unlike Myspace) and have an excellent product vision. I knew myspace would
crash and burn eventually, I hated that site from early on. Surfing myspace
was too godamned annoying with animated GIFs, background music, random friend
requests, and spam. Facebook however, gave everyone what they wanted;
information and connections to people they know.

I still use facebook everyday and I'm a year out of college. I probably engage
with less features (like wall commenting, photo uploading, apps, games) than I
used to and do more passive browsing.

I think the next big "social network" won't be recognized as a social network.
It will gather an audience based on some form of engagement revolving around a
winning feature set. Kind of like the way Twitter came along, but with a
better feature fit that would eventually creep into Facebook territory.

------
bigtech
There needs to be some way to easily differentiate between close friends and
casual acquaintances. I'm mainly interested in interacting with close friends,
and there are some things I don't wish to share with everyone I know. Without
this, everyone is on the same level and it leads to bad signal to noise ratio.

~~~
iaskwhy
I already hinted at this on a comment I made above but you can make list with
different permissions. I have one for real friends, one for people I have to
accept but I don't want them to see anything about me and those who aren't on
any of those lists are on the default one: they can't see most things but they
can see more than those who are almost blocked.

------
rblion
Facebook is not free. There is a psychological price and a spiritual tax to
pay, both are sly enough to go unnoticed by 90% of Facebook’s users. They are
called ‘users’ for a good reason; users = addicts. The product itself is
designed like a potent drug that exploits reptilian and mammillian frailties
for additional profit. Cynic, you say? Just look for yourself, it’s hard to
deny that the founders behind Facebook saw an ocean of data waiting to be
exploited for billions of dollars.

------
sandipagr
What sucks about facebook? That I can't stay away from it and I waste at least
an hour or two everyday on it. Someone should ban facebook. I'm not even
kidding

~~~
bl4k
What are you doing during all those hours? I never got into it that much
(other than trawling for hot women).

~~~
sandipagr
I am recent graduate, so I guess that explains a little. Normally, its being
in touch with everyone. I moved here from Nepal 4 years ago and Facebook is a
great way to be in touch with my high school friends. Maybe I like to keep an
eye on what people are upto :) plus, lots of event planning and chat
communication happen in facebook now. I see myself just leaving a msg on
facebook than using my email client. It's very sad that how digital world is
separating real life communications, eh?

~~~
apsurd
wth, this comment will always bother me.

    
    
      sad...
    

so contact people in real life! Write a hand written letter to someone.

If you don't know anybody that will sincerely appreciate a hand-written letter
from you, make some new friends and get a new mother, father, sister, uncle,
aunt, and dog.

~~~
sandipagr
Communication is not a one way street, sir! I was just saying what I feel. My
friends prefer texting over phone calls while I am the other way. I have
texting disabled on my phone so that I can actually talk more often, though at
the expense of few lost communications.

regarding "get a new mother, father..." it doesn't cost to have some respect
for others, like seriously! I don't know why did I even bothered to respond

------
bkhl
Friendster, Orkut, Myspace all failed due to emergence of Facebook. If another
better social networking platform comes up, Facebook will go down...But I
don't see that happening in near future. Facebook does look like going to be
soaring up higher and higher if you look at the rate of their growth in not
just the number of users but also their features and company size.

------
ashconnor
That I can't hide friends from other friends.

~~~
bl4k
this came up recently. most people in real life have more than one social
network/graph. facebook needs to support this at some point (ie. work, family,
friends, ex-girlfriends, f buddies, etc.)

~~~
iaskwhy
Check my comment above about lists, it's already there!

------
stevederico
Uploading multiple photos/videos from an iPhone. If this is possible in the fb
app I can't find it. Pixelpipe is the best solution I can find.

------
omarchowdhury
The unfiltered narcissism, the disjointed philosophy spewed by bored people,
and the rap lyrics. Of course, most of my friends are young.

------
ethan
Centralized, and closed. I want an OpenAuth or similar solution. Diaspora
could be it.

~~~
bl4k
Ye I just don't know if most people care about that though..

------
mrlyc
Facebook sucks because it is careless about my privacy.

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karlzt
the concept itself

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edfuh
the movie

------
foxtrot
the games.

