Facebook User Satisfaction Is 'Abysmal' 289
adeelarshad82 writes "American Customer Satisfaction Index recently conducted a survey in which they found that even though Facebook is gaining popularity, they are doing a miserable job of keeping their users satisfied. According to the survey Facebook scored 64 out of 100 for customer satisfaction, which puts the website in line with the satisfaction rates for airlines and cable companies. The survey also includes other websites like YouTube and Wikipedia (which scored considerably higher) and MySpace, which came in slightly lower. (The survey did not include Twitter since many of its members access the site through third-party sites rather than Twitter.com.) The ACSI was founded at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, and is based on annual interviews with about 70,000 customers. The group has measured portals and search engines in the past, as well as news and information websites, but this is the first year the ACSI included social networking sites." UM professor Claes Fornell blogged: "Controversies over privacy issues, frequent changes to user interfaces, and increasing commercialization have positioned the big social networking sites at satisfaction levels well below other Web sites..."
Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines (Score:5, Informative)
A new report from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) has put Facebook just above the taxman [wsj.com] on America's lists. Out of 30 online companies, the two absolute worst were MySpace with 63 out of 100 and Facebook at 64 but other high scoring sites included Wikipedia (77) and YouTube (73). Unsurprisingly the report reveals that of the 233 companies they monitor year round, MySpace and Facebook are in the bottom 5% for customer satisfaction. That puts them with airlines and cable companies--two historically low ranked industries of customer satisfaction. You can see a brief overview [theacsi.org] of the scores and also note that on search engines, Bing hits 77 just behind Google at 80 for customer satisfaction. The full report with an overview of why consumers were satisfied or dissatisfied with each site can be found here in PDF [foreseeresults.com].
Seriously, MySpace and Facebook are down there with cable companies and airlines. And their service is (on the surface) free. Must be doing a terrible job.
UM professor Claes Fornell blogged: "Controversies over privacy issues, frequent changes to user interfaces, and increasing commercialization have positioned the big social networking sites at satisfaction levels well below other Web sites..."
Oh, if only it ended there--he missed news feed control problems, advertising, spam, navigation issues and annoying applications. From the actual report:
When asked what they like least about Facebook, survey respondents gave answers including privacy and security concerns, the technology that controls the news feeds, advertising, the constant and unpredictable interface changes, spam, navigation troubles, annoying applications with constant notifications, and functionality, to name a few. There is no shortage of complaints about Facebook.
Missing the point: WE are not customers to FB (Score:5, Insightful)
"Customer Satisfaction" for Facebook is measured in click-throughs and sales dollars... not in user complaints.
You and I are not customers to Facebook. We're the product. We're what they're selling - our eyeballs are being sold to the advertisers. Their only reason to make you happy is to ensure you come back (begrudgingly or not).
Once you realize that, their lack of "customer service" isn't surprising in the least. So long as you're not paying for the service, you're not a customer. They care very little about your privacy, your experience, the impact that their constant site layout changes and privacy policies have on you, the annoyance if/when they sell your personal data to mailing lists and spammers - so long as it all suits the needs of their true customers and doesn't piss you off enough that you don't keep coming back. This is the way of business... get used to it unless you want to pay for these things.
MadCow.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Nonsense. Facebooks customers are it's users. You piss off the users too much and you lose their traffic. Lose the traffic and you lose your ad revenue.
Bottom line it is in the best interest of Facebook to please its user base.
Re: (Score:2)
And you both missed the facts.
You are not Facebook's customer.
The people buying your information from Facebook are the customer.
You are the product.
Blizzard, racing to the bottom (Score:2)
The really great part about this, to me, is that Blizzard is still going to blaze forward with a depraved interbreeding of their games with Facebook.
"Hey guys, I've got a great idea! Let's hitch our wagon to the service with the second-lowest customer satisfaction on the Internet! It's so crazy, it just might work!"
Reporting Failure (Score:2)
Of Course the damn Article makes a fundemental Mistake. That mistake is who the customers are. In the case of Facebook and MySpace it's the Advertisers, not the ef*** users.
Right, It's the Most Popular Website in the USA (Score:5, Informative)
And yet EVERYONE uses it anyway. They must like something about it. I think it's great. Of course I don't run ANY apps and I use Adblock.
Right, the same report says:
However, according to July 2010 Hitwise data, Facebook is the number one website in the country, with 9% of all website visits (Google has 7.4% and Yahoo! 3.8%) and 55% of all social media visits. Facebook’s market dominance in the U.S. and around the world is indisputable. How can it be so popular if people dislike it so much?
They go on to point out Facebook's monopoly and its popularity being more with younger people while older people complain about it the most. There's little loyalty but it acts as a storehouse for existing videos and pictures well. Then I think this is the most telling piece of this paradox:
Customers are willing to suffer through a poor experience in return for the benefits Facebook provides. This is a rare scenario in the American economy: usually customer satisfaction is intertwined with market success. The few exceptions to this rule (airlines, cable companies, and fast food) are operating in a sphere where there are no true standouts, so the bar is low. Should MySpace stage a comeback, or should any other competitor to Facebook deliver a truly superior customer experience, Facebook should have cause for concern. Right now, only Wikipedia and YouTube surpass Facebook in terms of customer satisfaction, and they are not in direct competition.
Interesting stuff to consider for social sites. If Facebook users are so unhappy, could you build a better Facebook that grabs their images and videos off of Facebook and moves their friend network for them? I don't think Facebook would stand for it long but it's interesting to consider.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The difference between then and now is 3rd party integration.
My phone has a Facebook app. My photo album automatically uploads to Facebook. The list goes on.
Facebook is not MySpace and the market surrounding it is not the same as it was a few years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"Everyone"?
In the same sense that and for similar reasons why, "everyone" uses Windows on the desktop: Network effects [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's good right? (Score:5, Interesting)
If the user's ever satisfied, he'll stop clicking. Keeping satisfaction one click away seems to be Facebook's entire business model.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
sounds like software in general.... want a working feature.. that'll be in the next version that you'll want to upgrade to.
Re: (Score:2)
sounds like software in general.... want a working feature.. that'll be in the next version that you'll want to upgrade to.
The alternative is keeping up with compatibility for OS updates which also keeps you reaching for features.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Facebook: Yesssssss....yessss you AAAARE.
Doesn't seem likely.
Re:That's good right? (Score:4, Interesting)
The issue is that in the good ol' days, there was much less lock-in. To a certain extent, that's true as well. If a waitress is rude to me at Applebees, I won't eat there anymore. If a can of soup is not to my liking, I'll purchase a different brand. If my web hosting company treats me poorly, I'll switch to another provider. In these cases, one pays directly for a service with no intertia to overcome.
By contrast, Facebook is where all of my friends are. Its private messaging function has largely replaced personal e-mail. My cell phone integrates seamlessly with Facebook and automatically updates their status, their photo, and their birthday in my calendar (as well as any events that I RSVP as attending). There are people with whom the only method of communication I have with them is through Facebook.
In Facebook's defense, they solved a LOT of problems that Myspace had in its heydey. From simple things like requiring real names instead of handles to display to people ('cuz x0x0LaTiNaLoVeRx0x with a picture of a palm tree makes perfect sense to me), to issues with spam (I constantly got friend requests and messages from "18 and have a webcam" chiqs, rare if ever on FB), to not allowing custom HTML (have you seen some of the God-awful crap that people cut-and-pasted together? half the pages there took forever to load and looked like someone swalllowed all of Geocities and Xanga and vomited it onto a web server) to just a general community shift from being who you want people to think you are and begging for comments to just putting out there who you are and not having arguments over whether you're in someone's top 8 or not. It was really only a matter of time before the holes in Facebook's systems were exploited.
Privacy issues are just inherent with giving a company - be it Facebook, Google, Microsoft, or whoever - the amount of personal data a typical Facebook page contains. I wonder how many people complaining about the security being slowly relaxed over time have actually made specifications as to what they want, or whether they have their own profiles on the defaults.
The thing that irks me the most about Facebook with regards to privacy was how they defaulted to making your info available to basically everyone. Targeted ads within Facebook are one thing - bandwidth isn't free, and neither is hard disk space. I, for one, don't mind targeted ads. I'd much rather see an ad for the new Above and Beyond album than for Kotex. I do have an issue when I post a status update regarding owning an HTC phone, and suddenly half the banner ads on the websites I visit thereafter involve the latest HTC gear. That's just plain creepy, and yes, I turned it off once I realized that it was there.
In summary, having users come back when they're happy is still accurate, except in cases when there is lock-in (cell phone numbers, e-mail addresses, Facebook accounts, heck even MS Windows [for those of us with substantial hardware/software investments]). By its nature, Facebook will remain the de facto standard for social networking until they both royally screw up AND have a viable competitor ready to catch their fall.
Facebook already knows their users are unhappy (Score:2)
The question is whether they'd sell that information...Google perhaps?
Yeah, but (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Yeah, but (Score:5, Funny)
Look beyond that! It's a religious principle. The first noble truth of Buddhism, sometimes translated: "Life is filled with a deep sense of unsatisfaction." It's Facebook against Buddha.
Cable companies on the other hand have no excuse. There's no religious principle that says, "thou shalt overcharge for misrepresented crappy services." They are going to hell.
Re:Yeah, but (Score:4, Funny)
What is this "relationship" of which you speak? I am fascinated by this concept; please subscribe me to your newsletter.
or do you wish you had cooler friends?
What is this "friends" of which you speak? Do you cover this topic in your newsletter?
Re: (Score:2)
If Facebook is an attempt to map reality,
Then most people either want to be peasant farmers or mafia bosses?
The weird part is, that may be true!
Re:Yeah, but (Score:4, Insightful)
Life is so much more exciting when you are doing things. Even if it is just planting a seed and watching it grow. I guarantee Linus Torvalds has a much more interesting and exciting life than Lindsay Lohan, even though hers is more what is traditionally considered wild.
Re: (Score:2)
Then most people either want to be peasant farmers or mafia bosses?
And if there's overlap - free fertilizer! Woot!
Re: (Score:2)
Unsatisfaction? Never heard it translated that way, I thought it was 'suffering.' Which means more than just sickness, old age, and death. Every good thing contains suffering, if only in that you will miss it when you don't have it. In fact, 'pain' is not even really suffering. Suffering is when we create ideas in our heads that make us unhappy, punishing ourselves for our failures, replaying painful events, fearing the loss of pleasurable things, and generally making assumptions and then having feelings ab
Re: (Score:2)
I had occasion to watch cable the other day at my parents' place. Felt like I'd left a quiet poolroom and entered a Chuck'e'Cheese (however that's spelled). Gawd, all those LOUD and stupid ads. Even with mute, it's like they're clawing at the inside of my brain o.O
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You are right though, in the modern consumerist society, satisfaction is easily found at the touch of a button or injection of a drug.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course. No one can ever be satisfied. If they are, it must be because they are easily satisfied. Self-fulfilling cliches - the hallmark of religions down the ages. Moving goalposts and all that rot. *Yawn* Eastern mysticism is even more obscurantist than western religion.
Also, to be perfectly clear, I was criticizing an attitude behind a profoundly meaningless statement. If that statement does not capture the essence of the attitude, then it is merely a lazy label for something else entirely and my criti
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course. No one can ever be satisfied. If they are, it must be because they are easily satisfied. Self-fulfilling cliches - the hallmark of religions down the ages. Moving goalposts and all that rot.
lol I'm sorry you didn't catch the irony of the statement, "satisfaction can be found with a drug injection" for surely a drug injection (such as heroin) is in no way satisfying: as soon as the rush is over, you need to find more to keep yourself up. How can it be called satisfaction if it is only temporary? As for consumerism, if you need to rush to the next shiny object to get your fix of happiness, that is not satisfaction. Satisfaction and happiness can only be found from inside, not from external ob
Sense of entitlement much? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Sense of entitlement much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or publicizes information that you specifically told them to keep private.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Sense of entitlement much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why?
I fully understand the risks of putting anything online, in particular at a social networking site. Most of us here do. We are not typical of the average person using technology or the internet. Beyond simply protecting grandma and teenagers from their themselves, I still ask why it must be unrealistic to assume FB (or any social networking site) to keep their promises.
I don't have a comprehensive change log of FB's EULA or interface, but the bottom line is they keep changing it at whim. Companies want a EULA to have the strength of a full contract, but it works both ways. They can't just alter the terms and expect it to stick
As an example, credit card companies like to change terms often. The notice they send, however, clearly states that a card holder may opt out and stick with the current terms. Their card will remain valid until the expiration date under the current contract terms. Facebook does not do this. I might have placed a photo with privacy settings such that only my family members can see it. They later make a sweeping change to open that photo to third-party apps or the public at large. This is the real problem with Facebook.
If they made that change with a notice that let you opt-out, or delete all previous data that was set to be private, people would probably have a much better opinion of them. Of course, that also might make people aware of how much they're really putting out there, and Facebook would rather they didn't think about it.
Re: (Score:2)
I still ask why it must be unrealistic to assume FB (or any social networking site) to keep their promises.
The same reason it was unrealistic for me to think the VA would keep social security number private?
It's not the promise-breaking I'm worried about, it's the fact that no information that is online is secure, regardless of the promise.
Re: (Score:2)
That's nice, but in lots of other places you have a universal right to privacy, even if you post something like that because it's considered a business transaction. Which means they have to get your explicit permission, and in most places outside the US, EULA's aren't binding.
Re: (Score:2)
I never said anything about EULAs. I merely state that if information is online, only a fool thinks it is safe.
You can put stuff on facebook and hope it doesn't get misused because they have good privacy in place, or you can NOT put stuff on facebook, which will never be compromised.
I choose to put stuff on facebook, because they do a 'good enough' job for my privacy tolerance levels. People who bitch about it are free to not use it.
Re:Sense of entitlement much? (Score:4, Insightful)
Facebook has repeatedly changed their policies to publish various data that they had said was private or friends-only. But hey, no problem, they didn't charge money when they screwed people over so it's OK!
Uh, no, it's not OK.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As for the changes, the vast majority of them were regressions simply change for the sake of changing. Yes, there -were- some great new features, namely the chat feature added in, but the "New Facebook"? It "fixed" bugs that didn't exist and a
Re: (Score:2)
What's curious is the anger is so impotent (and I say this without any snark). I heard a news piece on Canadian radio ("Search engine" by Jesse Brown) lately that talked about this. Apparently, with all the ruckus and "Quit FB" groups making noise, less than 0.01% of FB users actually quit over this. By the way, if you're Canadian, there's a class action lawsuit in the works representing all Canuck FBers (google it).
It's like expecting cocaine users to quit snorting because their dealer ratted them out to t
Re:Sense of entitlement much? (Score:5, Insightful)
For something that's free, people sure do get enraged when it changes in the slightest, or has bugs, or decides to try to profit from the information that people love to dump on it.
It's an equal exchange. Facebook as a corporation would go out of business in a hurry if not for its users. The users are doing their part. Facebook is failing to do theirs in a way that satisfies the very users who make its existence possible. It's perfectly legitimate to raise an objection about this.
You're essentially saying "shut up and take what you're given" as though Facebook were a charity. They absolutely are not, and it's intellectually dishonest to speak about them as though they were.
Re: (Score:2)
It's perfectly legitimate to raise an objection about this.
But that objection would carry weight only if there was some substantial threat behind it (the threat of large numbers of FB users quitting for instance). Even with massive mobilization, less than 0.01% of users did so after this latest debacle. That sends a clear message to FB that there are no consequences to privacy violations. Clearly, the users need it much more than the other way around. The users have no leverage by themselves (rather like politics in a large democracy). Note that they do have it in
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure I'm understanding your point. Because no one is "forcing" me to use a service, it is therefore somehow unethical or unreasonable to voice an opinion on it?
If no one is allowed to criticize the practices of a company unless they are being held captive, how will others be able to make the informed choice of whether to leave or stay?
Re: (Score:2)
No, he's saying you're perfectly free to move along if you don't like it. Who the hell forces you to use facespace?
Actually the above is why I don't personally use it, but we were not talking about me personally until you attempted to make that the focus of this conversation. I can easily show why that's silly and useless and probably an attempt to distract.
The fact that I don't personally use it does not make it alright for Facebook to poorly treat those who do use it. It's really that simple. I never claimed that anyone is forced to use Facebook. Nothing I have said depends on anyone being forced to use Faceboo
Re: (Score:3)
It's not free, nothing is. People still have to spend time creating and customizing their accounts. In their minds, this constitutes and investment just like any other, and they feel betrayed when the terms of the investment suddenly change.
Re:Sense of entitlement much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the problem is that like the cable industry, *Facebook* acts like it has a sense of entitlement. Once they had a critical mass and growth rate, they decided they could shit all over their users and the users wouldn't defect, leaving plenty of eyeballs to advertise to and freeing them to engage in short-term profit-maximizing behavior.
Sadly, many of these dissatisfied users keep using Facebook even though they know it sucks and they hate it.
Re: (Score:2)
Once they had a critical mass and growth rate, they decided they could shit all over their users and the users wouldn't defect, leaving plenty of eyeballs to advertise to and freeing them to engage in short-term profit-maximizing behavior.
Seems to have been an amazingly accurate prediction on their part. Dicks yes, but highly intelligent dicks =)
Re: (Score:2)
For something that's free, people sure do get enraged when it changes in the slightest, or has bugs, or decides to try to profit from the information that people love to dump on it.
Well, if you promise one thing for free, then go changing it on people, yeah, that annoys them at least a little. They were expecting one thing and had their reasons for agreeing to it in the first place. Those expectations may have been ignorant, but you don't sign up for facebook -after- investigating their privacy policy, that's just not how normal people work.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
API lousy, too (Score:3, Informative)
And, as a developer, I can say that their API is buggy and very poorly documented, by far the worst of any of the social networking or photo sharing sites I've worked with. My daughter reports that available iPhone/iPad apps are terrible, too.
Re: (Score:2)
Worse than Myspace? If so, that's an interesting, developer-centric attitude. I can't find one person over the age of 14 who thinks Myspace is a better user experience than Facebook.
I'm surprised Twitter wasn't included. (Score:2)
They're still subject to many hours of downtime per year. I'd still like to see what users think of the fail whale and other representations of Twitter's persistent capacity issues.
Re:I'm surprised Twitter wasn't included. (Score:5, Funny)
Hey!
Twitter has 5 8's reliability.
That is only 1 less than the 5 9's that people keep raving about!
User satisfaction is irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed. Users aren't the customers. They're the product.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The users are the product that they are selling.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If those users had any backbone then they'd do without a non-critical service before they'd use one that they don't like. And no, a vanity page is not a critical service that one could never live without. Because they have no such backbone, Facebook can collect revenue even when it does a terrible job.
Re: (Score:2)
Reality doesn't seem to support you in this. The social inertia of an entire network of friends is a massive thing. And these trends are more complicated by the fact that these are true networks - with horrendous connectivity (not like the social circles of yore that used to be dominated by a handful of people that largely controlled trends). Besides, if such a large scale fiasco couldn't push users away, I'm curious to see what will. The users are addicted, they're invested too heavily and at a personal le
Re: (Score:2)
"64 out of 100"
Facebook for President!
Re: (Score:2)
Whether the users are happy or not doesn't mean squat to Facebook because their users aren't their customers.
Until their users are so unhappy that they leave and their real customers immediately follow. Look at radio stations. They're in hard times because everyone is listening to their mp3s or internet radio, or something that doesn't have annoying DJs and ads. The fact that you don't pay radio as a customer is irrelevant.
Not quite irrelevant (Score:2)
Its true that, instead of customers, their users are the suppliers of the product that they sell to their customers.
However, that doesn't make user satisfaction irrelevant, as user satisfaction is a key factor in user retention in the presence of alternatives.
There was a time when MySpace was the dominant social networking site, and if Facebook can't keep its users happy, it it won't keep its users i
Predictability (Score:2)
I'd add an item to that list: users who can't see the seeds of those things and must
A small reminder (Score:4, Insightful)
You get what you pay for
Re: (Score:2)
Facebook's users are what's being sold here, let's not kid ourselves.
Re: (Score:2)
You get what you pay for
Oh boy! Have I got the perfect bridge for you! *twirls mustache*
Re: (Score:2)
You get what you pay for
Unless you're a Slashdot subscriber. Then you get the same thing others get for free.
Joey (Score:2)
If it's not a quote, it should be. (Score:2, Interesting)
well firts thoughts... (Score:5, Interesting)
It took around 10 seconds to shoot down standard army targetting dummy.
If the laser tower can target the pilot in classical manned aircraft (and I bet it can), it's done in less than a second, even from quite far away.
In result, aircraft with any tranlucent windows seem totally unusuable for combat now.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
oh holy god. I posted it to wrong discussion. please ignore me. :D
Re:well firts thoughts... (Score:5, Funny)
Is this some kind of Farmville mod? Cause that might make that game actually interesting.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
not sure i understand (Score:2)
user satisfaction for a free product? don't get me wrong, i personally don't like the idea of facebook.
but face the facts: their purpose is to have many users, and they're getting more and more users.
do these people with the survey provide any kind of insight into how their result means "people will leave facebook"?
by default, such a website can't possibly be "liked", because it needs to satisfy your granma and your cousin with the PhD who's doing research into AI. nobody can really like it, they're just us
Re: (Score:2)
by default, such a website can't possibly be "liked", because it needs to satisfy your granma and your cousin with the PhD who's doing research into AI. nobody can really like it, they're just using it because they can't find anything better
In other words, "The internet is for pr0n"
Re: (Score:2)
user satisfaction for a free product? don't get me wrong, i personally don't like the idea of facebook. but face the facts: their purpose is to have many users, and they're getting more and more users.
I love the people I'm connected with via the site. I hate the site. It's like a smelly dive you're willing to go to for the sake of your friends because they always meet there. FB, although a "free" product should worry about being too smelly; if enough users leave, the people paying for corporate voyeurism will throw their money at $FOO instead.
And like the cable companies... (Score:3, Insightful)
Facebook is basically a monopoly in this space. No matter what the satisfaction rating, people will continue to use it, sometimes all freaking day. I would love to have a business "failing" this badly.
Re:And like the cable companies... (Score:4, Insightful)
If everyone wanted to, they could move from Facebook to another social networking site very easily. Saying that Facebook is a monopoly is akin to saying Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and Gmail are monopolies, they are popular, but there isn't really much stopping me from going to a different email provider.
And people -have- moved social networking sites many, many, many times in the past. One only needs to look at Friendster and Myspace to see that. What Facebook has done that will make it hard to de-throne is that -everyone- has a Facebook, they have made it easy for not only teenagers to have an account but also middle aged people and the elderly, something that Friendster and Myspace failed to do.
It's "Free" (Score:2)
If FB were to charge for their services it would be a different story. For example, I pay $25 per year for a flickr account. As a result, I have a much lower tolerance for quality issues with flickr than I do with facebook. Luckily, flickr issues ar
It was cool when I could use it to find everyone (Score:2)
It turns out that as cool as getting connected is, actually being connected kind of sucks.
Re: (Score:2)
What was cool about Facebook is I've been able to find all the folks I studied abroad with in Germany back in 2000 even though there were people from the US, UK, Ireland, Iceland, Finland, Turkey, etc.. It was kind of fun to see everyone ten years later and see what folks were up to and keep some type of tabs of people. It also helps because now if I need to get a work permit for the UK, that's what one of my friends from that program does now for living. That part of Facebook I enjoy. Also I like how
I am sorely disappointed (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
You've mistaken Facebook for MySpace.
Re: (Score:2)
You should probably do what I did and upgrade your account:
https://ssl.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account [facebook.com]
(Just don't mind that delete_account part... They meant to type upgrade) ;)
Tangential rant: text when data is better (Score:3, Insightful)
I see this time and again in news reports: they list statistics and numbers that they are clearly reading off of a list or graph, but don't let us actually see the graph! I appreciate that I may be more technically-minded than most, and may be more comfortable with graphs and ordered datasets than the average news reader. However I think anyone smart/educated enough to understand the point being made in a paragraph of statistics is better served by a simple and clean (but accurate) graph or ordered list.
Re:Tangential rant: text when data is better (Score:4, Informative)
82 FoxNews.com (news)
80 Google (search)
77 Wikipedia
77 USAToday.com (news)
77 Microsoft Bing (search)
76 NYTimes.com (news)
76 Yahoo (search)
75 ABCNews.com (news)
75 MSN
74 MSNBC.com (news)
74 AOL
73 CNN.com (news)
73 Ask.com (search)
73 YouTube
66 Airlines
66 Subscription TV service
64 Facebook
63 MySpace
User Satisfaction is a horrible Metric. (Score:4, Insightful)
People are stupid. Their opinions are stupid and lousy indicators of a product's quality. YouTube users are more satisfied? Have you seen the user comments on YouTube? Have you ever been able to find something you need on YouTube hidden amongst the millions of complete time-waster outlets for any idiot with a camera?
People who like their stuff like their stuff, regardless of how good or bad it really is. Saying Facebook has bad user satisfaction is a byproduct of populist group-think: "I heard something about Facebook giving out my private information (that I willingly host on the Internet)...damn those bastards! But I'm not giving up my Facebook because it's too important to me!".
Seriously, if it so abysmal, stop using it. Not enough people have that sort of character, though. It's too easy to bitch about things without actually doing anything about it.
Re: (Score:2)
have you ever been able to find something...?
Yes. Two words: Ninja Cat [youtube.com].
Re: (Score:2)
It has everyone, because.. well it has everyone. And once it got everyone, it started to change for the worse. The changes are what people are complaining about.
If there was an alternative with better privacy regulations and less crap, I think lots of people would jump ship. The problem is, most of the value of Facebook comes from the size of it's user base. In order for the alt
Re: (Score:2)
Facebook used to be cool before they started screwing it up. I don't think it's users are stupid.
I do. The beauty of Facebook is it let's me know just how stupid my racist uncle really is, or how ignorant my young coworker is of the world, or just how insanely right wing nut job some of my friends really are.
Then there's this gem:
http://www.failbook.com/ [failbook.com]
(at work, it's blocked, so i can't remember if it's .org or .com)
I like the guy who was crowing about how he got lucky only for his mom to press the "like" button.
Did they ask the question the right way? (Score:2)
I mean, a subtle change in wording of a question that means, "Do you like facebook?" and all you're finding out is that a lot of people don't like their friends or their own lives.
And slashdot ranks ... (Score:2)
Although one would think that the complaints of
frequent changes to user interfaces, and increasing commercialization
Should ring some bells around here... or maybe not.
Apples to Oranges? (Score:2)
Why even compare an airline with a social networking site with a video sharing site? How do you even quantify that? When an airline crams me into a small seat for 400 dollars I'm dissatisfied, which is to say I'm always dissatisfied with airlines. When a video sharing site doesn't load a video I become dissatisfied, which almost never happens.
It's like saying hammers are better than cars because more people are satisfied that their hammers do a better job.
Users != customers (Score:2)
The only customers that matter are the ones who advertise on the site. Everyone else is a viewer. As long as they go on viewing and clicking on ads, their opinions about a free service won't count for much. It's like griping about commercial broadcast TV. It's free to the consumer, all that counts is that the advertisers get their message out there because they are the true "customers" from a strict business point of view. The only thing that will make a significant change to the way these providers do busi
Human nature strikes again (Score:4, Interesting)
Facebook allows you to communicate with almost anyone you have ever known, for free. Yeah screw them, they suck. This article is all over the web and it is worthless and meaningless.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
The point isn't that people post less than accurate pictures (though they do), the point is that crazy stalkers will track you down for a "surprise hookup". Fortunately, you can make the slashdot idle section if you update your facebook status to "is being raped by a crazy stalker".
Re:So is facebook losing users? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is facebook just the least abysmal compared to all the other competitors and non-competitors.
Bingo. Ding-ding-ding! Give the man a cookie, he's hit the nail on the head.
Facebook sucks the least of any site offering the service they offer. That's the key to their success.
Don't like it. Start your own site.
Oh, no! And you were on a roll! Well, we have some lovely consolation prizes. Thanks so much for playing. :)
Not really a practical answer. In order to have a social site, you have to have the opportunity to socialize. Facebook was the earliest contender to have a site that didn't blow big stinky steaming monkey chunks, and therefore most of the social site fans are already there and pretty entrenched.
To unseat Facebook, you're going to have to build something so fantastic, so compelling, so supremely awesome that people are going to want to move en masse. That way, your new users have a chance at having at least a little bit of a friend network when they arrive.
And since most of Facebook's money comes from targeted advertising, any serious contender is either going to have the same privacy issues and ruin most of the incentive to leave Facebook, charge a membership fee and alienate users that way, or run the site out of the goodness of their hearts to the tune of millions of dollars of losses a year.
The same was said of AOL - they were the first to make a compelling case for that newfangled Internet thingy to the masses, and they were the BIG player back when the Internet was young, and a connection was on the other side of a dialup modem. Facebook is the same "training wheels to social sites" that AOL was the "training wheels to the Internet" back then.
AOL was eventually unseated, and Facebook will be, too. But probably not in the next couple of years. There's little profitable incentive to unseat them and do so in such a way that people would actually want to leave Facebook.