Facebook Talk

Dear Facebook,

Hey there, old friend, it’s Goob. Remember me? I’m that guy who signed up with you way back when you were just a local Harvard experiment. I stood by you, through thick and thin, even deciding to open up a website in support of you when all those mean anti-news feed people were attacking you. Long story short, I think I’ve earned a little favor from your neck of the woods.

Well it time for me to curry that favor. Please, for the love of all that is Holy, fix your Gods damned auto-banning feature. Seriously, if I get one more e-mail asking why some highschool nerd had his account deleted when all he was doing was secretly poking the head cheerleader, I’m likely to go on a ten state killing spree. If another British person e-mails me asking why their account was deleted when they were posting on their friend’s wall, I swear I will spend the rest of my life trying to get the US and Britain in an all out nuclear war. It’ll be worth the collateral causalities just for the revenge factor alone. The least you could do is fix the site BEFORE you send your vice president of marketing and operations out to tout how awesome you are to potential investors.

You’re like the hot chick that I fell in love with before she discovered the glory of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Come on, Facebook, you’re better than this. I know you’re stealing top programmers left and right from the likes of Google and Microsoft. Can you not spare one guy to sift through your code and figure out why so many people are being banned for no reason? Heck, better yet, just hire some bum for a fraction of the cost (where do I send my resume?) to do some basic freaking tech support and reinstate all the innocents who were banned!

I know you’ve got it in you, Facebook. Let’s see this happen.

Goob

A while back, Facebook introduced the ability to vote up or down any story in your news feed. Within weeks, they had expanded this feature to your Facebook home page.

I didn’t really care about the news feed part because I always have that box collapsed on mine and other people’s profiles. But I look at my Facebook home page every single day to get a pulse on what’s happening in my small world on Facebook. It’s helpful to see what my friends are up to and any new messages I’ve gotten all right on one page. But the one thing I hate is how all the information on the page is cluttered up with useless crap that I don’t care about: application additions!

I don’t care what applications my friends have recently added or what friends they’ve found through some app or how many vampires they’ve bitten. So, in an effort to get that crap off my Facebook home page, for the past two months I’ve been clicking the red X next to any news that has to do with applications and clicking the green thumbs up next to any news that has to do with wall posts. I wanted to see if I could eventually get it to the point where my Facebook home page had nothing but news on recent wall posts my friends have made. So what are the results after 2+ months?

Nothing. Nada. Zilch. If anything, I get more application news items on my home page now. Which leads me to ponder that Facebook doesn’t really listen to their own users when it comes to this feature. So then what’s the point of having the buttons to click?! Has anybody else had similar experiences and results? Then please share in the comments!

facebook

Facebook, I need your help. I like to drink. There’s no real shocking or Earth-shattering news there. But what you don’t already know is that I like to get on Facebook when I’ve had a little too much delicious alcohol. There, I said it. I’m a Drunk Facebooker.

Now, short of implementing some breathalyser test before people can log onto Facebook, there’s not much that can stop me from destroying every shred of dignity I have left once I get the brilliant idea in my head that it’s a great time to get on Facebook after 10 Tequila shots! First, you’ve got the obligatory drunken wall posts. That’s just an absolute given. In fact, I’ll probably spent an hour making three drunken wall posts.

But then we move onto the more complicated matters. Like leaving a Facebook group and putting down a horribly stupid reason why. Who even does stuff like that? Oh yeah, drunk people. Very drunk people.

But you know what? It’s all good. Because when you wake up the next morning, it doesn’t take long to stroll through your browser history and see all the drunken comments you left on people’s walls. Or to look in your news feed and see all the stupid things you shouted out to everybody. And with just a few clicks of your mouse, you can make them all go away, as if they never happened. Ahh….

But wait! Suddenly you notice that you visited your old high school girlfriend’s profile. And after that, you went to the profile of that smoking hot chick in your chemistry class that you never talk to. And is that your History professor’s profile next on the list? And suddenly you vaguely remember adding them all as your friend and accompanying each request with a “hilarious” personal message explaining to them why you should totally hook up. And yes, that even goes for your professor.

In short, Facebook, help a brother out and make it so that we can rescind a friends request! There’s no reason that request should just float out there forever, even indefinitely if the receiving party decides to not answer it so that they can look at it and laugh whenever they want. Us alcoholics are pleading with you, Facebook! Do something to help us avoid living in eternal shame!

This goes further than Drunk Facebooking though. What if you send a friend request to Jim Smith only to quickly realize that’s not the Mr. J. Smith you happen to know. Should you really have to wait until he signs on, sees it, and starts messaging you asking who you are and how you know him? Wouldn’t it make more sense to be able to decline it on your own?

Call me crazy, but I think this would be a great additional feature to Facebook.

Facebook, drunk facebook, drunk facebooking

Just to add onto what I posted earlier today about Facebook application invitations, take a look at the picture below.

That photo is a shot of the settings you can edit in regard to what items show up on your Facebook Home page. I can edit how much news I’m told about updated profiles, new photos, even relationship statuses. But I can’t edit how much news I get about my friends adding new applications to their profiles? Are you serious?

I don’t care if my friend recently added the Super Wall application to her profile or if my buddy just added the Booze Mail application. I’m going to immediately minimize them both upon viewing their profiles and never look at them again. So why do I need to be told when they add yet another pointless app? What is the logic behind this? Why doesn’t Facebook’s What’s New page mention a fix or update for this problem?

Facebook, you’re starting to tick me off here. This is the kind of customer support I expect from AOL, not from one of my favorite sites of all time.

Dear Facebook,

What the hell are you doing? Why is it taking you so long to make it so that I can block all of these pointless application requests?!

I know it seems like I’ve been harping about this since early June, but that alone shows how this has been a problem for a while and how Facebook has yet to do anything about it. It’s been frou freaking months and yet I’m still getting bitten by vampires and eaten by wolves and shot by crazy rednecks or whatever the latest Facebook app fad is at the moment. It’s getting to the point where I’m avoiding Facebook more and more because I’m getting frustrated and annoyed with Facebook’s seemingly “we don’t really care” attitude about this problem.

I’m clearly not the only person who feels this is getting a bit out of control. At the same time, I’m not saying turn off all Facebook invitations.

If Billy has an app that he thinks Sally, Joe, and Mike would love, he should be able to invite them to join. But if Mike has already gotten 50 million previous invitations from Billy in the past and he’s sick and tired of it, his only two options shouldn’t be to either suck it up and deal with it or remove Billy as his friend.

Come on, Facebook. Fix this. Today.