Since coming out as ‘The Facebook’ exclusively for university students in 2004, this social networking website has rapidly become a household name around the world and has boomed to epic proportions with around 655 million active users browsing the site daily.
Despite everything, we have to face the fact that FarmVille notifications and less than pleasing messages in our “others folder” have become part of the most negative aspect of our Facebook social life (yes Abdullah from Turkey I’m talking to you). Here we list 3 things we would change about Facebook if we could:
1. Shelf The Live Ticker Feed
Seeing if your friends have liked and commented on a status, or become friends with someone you don´t even know, highly encourages us to engage in stalkerish behaviour. Luckily there is the option to hide the ticker, but closing it altogether is comparable to asking someone to not press a shiny red button – we are tempted to see everything.
This new level of lurking extends to friends posting on both pages and groups. I for one didn’t particularly want my friends, family or work colleagues pondering over an older post where i was ranting about a brand of yoghurt becoming increasingly unhealthy for me!
And now the awkward relationship status change to “single” slowly rolling down the ticker seems to be the online equivalent of having “single” scribbled on your forehead. Thank you Facebook for tempting us to become an even nosier online generation and no doubt creating awkwardness and squabbles between individuals, as a result of this in-your-face live rolling feed.
2. Leave the #Hashtags For Twitter
Facebook have recently implemented the ubiquitous clickable hashtag that can be integrated into any post. Much like Twitter, users can now conjure up publicity from their posts with this highly er.. innovative move towards cultivating more public discourse in the Facebook sphere. This rings the question of to what extent Facebook posts will become less personal and more topical. Less about the how great your birthday party was last night and more about political party turmoil. Facebook’s more personal edge of writing statuses to your friends, rather than broadcasting them to your followers could crumble into a fusion of a somewhat Twitterbook combination (minus the miniscule character limit.)
With more than half of users using Facebook on the go through a mobile device or tablet, it is quite shocking that these clickable tags are not yet supported on them. What’s more, how do we follow our favourite hashtags? Why is there not a hashtag feed? This new step seems like a watered down version of Twitter and yet another intrusive aspect of privacy.
3. And Finally, Stop Those Pesky Facebook App Invites Once and For All.
Mob Wars, Candy Crush Saga, Bubble Shooter, Farmville as well as other “wars” and “villes” have been increasingly clogging up our Facebook notifications. Although Facebook has taken giant strides in allowing us to block such irritating invites, new invites for applications and games still seem to make the list. And for the record, my high school acquaintances top score on bubble Shooter does not deserve a worthy place on my newsfeed, let alone anyone else’s. Gaming on Facebook was set to be the next big breakthrough between top game developers and online social media outlets, but the viral, spammy nature of Facebook gaming has provoked it to lose its lustre and become a massive annoyance.
