Facebook has done it again. Made random unsolicited changes without notifying anyone. The home page, which previously showed a filter feed of all your friends’ posts and activities, has become the “News Feed” consisting only of those posts that Facebook thinks you might be interested in. Another link goes to the “Live Feed” page, which is the full feed.
This change, which may seem trivial to you who don’t use Facebook on a regular basis, is quite irritating. Inherently there are two problems. First, Facebook obviously doesn’t know what I’m interested in. In fact, some of the posts I’m most interested in are those that could be determined ‘unpopular’ because they are friends of mine who don’t post on a regular basis. These are the people I really want to keep up with. Second, the home page functionality constantly keeps changing. It just always seems to be in flux, and that can be irritating.
We all appreciate companies that are actively improving their sites and making changes as needed, but there also needs to be some continuity and consistency. When you have 300 million regular users, it’s in your best interest not to make them angry, but that’s exactly what they have done. Again, in what has become a regular occurrence, Facebook users are joining protest groups and complaining loudly.
Facebook needs to find a way of rolling out these changes in a more controlled manner. When you have an app that 300 million people use, you can’t just make changes willy nilly and expect everyone to just go along with it. It’s poor project management, and poor customer service.