Friday, March 13, 2009

Facebook: Innovative or Annoying?

(The dorkishly endearing and yet omnipotent being that is Mark Zuckerberg)

There is a fine line between being innovative and being annoying. Facebook seems to have crossed this line. Repeatedly. I am not whining about it, or trying to sound like so many other boringly rant-filled bloggers out there, but I wanted to bring a phenomenon to people's attentions and provide a forum to discuss this fine line. 

From time to time Facebook updates its homepage, tools, and advertising methods. Anyone who knows good business knows it's essential to stay on top of things and be adaptable. However, there is a phrase that goes "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" that is just as valuable. That means that people who have a great product should be careful with tinkering with it too much because they can end up screwing themselves over. A change comparable to Facebook's constant overhauls would be if McDonald's constantly tried to sell Thai food or remix the special sauce in the Big Mac every other month. It's just not needed, and, it really doesn't make for a better product.
Inevitably I assume Facebook expects that its clients will just adapt to the changes as they always have. But, that most likely isn't because they think the new look, feel, or tools are that great, but because they have no choice.

I really don't have any solution. That's a bit sad. You might think that I would suggest a boycott, or a nude protest, or barraging Facebook with petitions of dissatisfaction coupled with packages of flaming dog excrement. 
Well, while you are welcome to consider those options and do them yourselves, I for one am going to just deal with it. I am just going to bow to the Facebook "man" Mark Zuckerberg. He is after all a billionaire online social networking God. He owns a little bit of my soul and the souls of almost a thousand of my friends. We do his bidding. All hail Zuckerberg! That has such a nice ring to it.

1 comment:

squirrelyearl said...

I've always felt like it's been a good upgrade. Of course I think I'm at least more initially in the minority. All computing seeks to make these kinds of changes, but they aren't usually much of an overhaul. I must say some of the OS jumps have been monumental though and that can backfire too, ie Windows Vista (Thank goodness for our Macs).