So now that we got through the preliminaries, (if you don't know what I'm referring to, see yesterday's blog entry) we can get down to what Mark Z needs to not do with FB that he's doing and what he needs to do that he's not.
Please don't think for a moment that I have to put much effort into not being an idiot. I realize that these days, Mark isn't sitting behind a desk and regulating much of anything regarding FB. He has people. He's probably off in Belize or something for Christmas, counting his pocket change (20, 40, 60, 80, a hundred thousand....) and not giving any thought to what the hoi polloi has to say about FB.
So really, I'm posting this not in the hopes that he will read it and say, "This is completely on target! I should have been doing this all along! I'm going to call my people at FB HQ right now and tell them to read this genius of a woman's blog, oh, and while I'm at it, I'll call my people in D.C. and tell them they really ought to add her face to Mount Rushmore!" I'm posting it to just get it out of my system.
Let's start with a person's News Feed....
1. If I bestow upon someone the High Honor of becoming my FB friend, I need options to pop up as soon as I accept their friend request and vice versa regarding how much of their life I want to see in my feed. Now if you and I are FB friends, of COURSE I want to see everything you post on FB, and I'm certainly not talking about YOU! ;-)
These options should range from "I want to know everything this person posts on FB, and in fact, if you could install some spyware on their account that gets me unrestricted access to their private messages as well, that'd be great!" to "I accepted their friend request because I know they are a few sandwiches short of a picnic, and I figured turning down the request would result in a dead bunny on my porch, so restrict their view of everything I post, and please Lord, don't show me ANYTHING that they post" And about six different options in between those two.
And while I'm on the subject of FRs, if you send me one, and I have to send you a message back asking you how we know each other, you have as big of a chance of me accepting it as my kids do of me ever accepting anything of the canine variety into our family. This also includes the men my daughter potentially dates.
2. Showing ads in my news feed needs to end NOW. Now I'm not talking about those little things on the side of your news feed. I get that Mark has to pay for FB somehow because it's free, despite what the Panic Button Pushers post on FB every six months or so. (These, by the way, are the same people who think they can find out who's viewing their profile.)
So I'm generally able to ignore the little side ads, except for that one they had for a loooong time about a gout study. (We'll skip the diatribe regarding my feelings about the feet of anyone over the age of one. I will just tell you. I. Hate. Feet.)
What really starts me on the express train to Freak the Freak Out Land is the "suggested posts" that turn up in my feed. "Suggested Post" is FB-ese for "Annoying Ad". I "hide" every single one of these, which leads me to another option to "hide all posts from (insert Annoying Ad's page name here)". I click on that as well.
FB then reassuringly tells me that Annoying Ads from ___ "will no longer appear in your news feed" Horse puckey. I have "hidden" many of these same Annoying Ads more than the average amount of times that Boy Child gets back up out of bed after bedtime on a given night. (Which is anywhere from three to nineteen depending on how many it takes to cause me to finally freak the freak out and send him scurrying back into his bed for the final time to fervently pray to God that his "real" mommy at last comes for him.)
3. Dump the "chat" feature. People don't IM online anymore, they text. Nuff said.
4. I need more options to what people post than "like", "comment" and "unlike". Some suggestions: "love", "dislike" and "this is so funny I peed a little when I read it"
Moving onto my personal home page....
1. Any pictures I post or that anyone posts of me need to come with another option besides tagging me or someone else in it. Depending on the closeness of the zoom or the angle of the shot, it needs to have a "take off 10 years" or "take off 10 lbs" option as well.
And don't give me a bunch of hooey about how everyone needs to be keepin' it real on FB anyway. What you get on FB is not the real backstage action of someone's life Honey, it's the highlight performance. Don't believe me? Go through your friends' profile pictures, and if you look close, I guarantee you'll discover that half of them are at least five years old. Mine may be only a month old, but you'd better believe it was taken by a pro and retouched! *sparkle snap*
2. Ask my permission before you post any of my activities or anything that someone tags me in to either my personal page or my friends' news feeds. I can guarantee that what someone else thinks is a "great" picture of me won't necessarily get that kudo from me. As a general rule, if I have food in my mouth, look like I'm intoxicated (which I can guarantee you I'm not), or you took the pic of my right side of my face (any girl with a nose the size of mine knows her best side!), don't tag.
Also, if we are at, say, a restaurant together, and you go to "check me in" there with you but discover in your search of nearby places that there is a XXX place of some sort close by, and you think it would be funny to "check us all in" there instead, leave me out. As a mom, the PTA president at my kids' school and a teacher in kids' church, the idea of me hamming it up at a porn venue might not go over well with some of my FB peeps.
3. Everything I post/is posted on my FB stays on my home page unless I delete it. You don't get to randomly pick and choose what gets saved. Since I am a FB addict, I like looking back at the end of the year over EVERYTHING, from my status updates to pictures and what people posted on my wall. No touchy!!
I could go on even longer than I already have with more stuff that Mark and the Geek Squad need to tweak. But most of you fell asleep before I got to number three on the News Feed suggestions, and the time is also drawing nigh to when I need to go start on Big Hair for the Christmas Eve events we are attending.
I will wrap up by saying that even though Mark and his squad don't always get it right, I will still be on Facebook unless the day comes where the PBPs have their "I told you so" moment, and Mark does start charging for it.. Because I know I have as much hope of breaking my FB addiction as I do the one I have to Words with Friends. Speaking of, I really gotta go now and catch up on my games while the curling iron heats up...
Sparkly Kisses,
D
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