I love people who criticize Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, as if he and the rest of the Facebook crew need any outside input from anyone. I’m pretty sure they know what they’re doing over there.
Take this guy’s suggestions. Alexander Wolfe, in his “Wolfe’s Den” column (I was actually going to start a column called “Deleon’s Den;” too late now), calls out Facebook. He wants it to be more “useful” so that it appeals beyond the 47 million users the site currently has. Fair enough. Nothing wrong with that at all.
First, he wants apps to be installed easier, drag and drop—that sort of thing. Again, fair I guess, though I’m not too keen on apps to begin with (no, I’m don’t want to be a zombie, a vampire… quit asking me). But he did use the word “paradigm” like he’s Steve Carell in The Office. Two-point penalty right there.
His second suggestion ain’t bad at all: RSS feeds. Everyone knows RSS is all the rage (this is 2004, right?), so put them up on there so I don’t have to log in just to check Vince’s status. Sure, it usually says “Farming for honor,” but sometimes I just need to know. As for the Twitter, blah, I could never use Twitter and my life wouldn’t change one bit.
Make it open, maaaaaan. Yes, Slashdot user, everyone knows openness begets awesomeness and making Facebook open to any developer could be a good thing. (Facebook can reject apps as it sees fit.) Again, I’m not a huge app user, so whatever.
Make EVERYTHING Wall-editable. Why do I want my dumb friends able to edit my personal info? Doesn’t it cease to become mine? And what would the advertisers think? “It says here Johnny is into [something],” while in reality he’s into [something else], it was just that his stupid friends changed his interests. This would be abused.
The last suggestion is all over the place. Make it easier to find other networks to join—that sounds OK to me—but making it easier to create a group? Really, how hard is it to click Groups then Create New Group?
So yeah, a few decent suggestions in there and some real dumb ones, too. Take notes, Zuckerberg.
5 Things Facebook Must Do To Be Really Useful [InformationWeek]