Microsoft: Give me back MY Facebook!
Again this morning. I took a photo, cropped it, shared it with Facebook, added a one paragraph comment and clicked “post”. Then the message. Some shit like, “your photo can’t be posted at this time”, and boom, my photo and comment is gone. Tried a second time, opening the Facebook app rather than sharing from Photos. But this time copied my comment to the clipboard first (fool me once). Same error message. Copied the photo and my comment to an email, sent it to myself, pulled out and fired up the Yoga, opened the email, saved the image, logged in to Facebook and entered the same friggin post that I tried to do almost 20 minutes earlier. WTF!!! And this is the third time this has happened.
Now, I realize that I am running Windows Phone 8.1 Developer Preview, and there may be some bugs. But we just got an update last week. And this is not a bug. It’s a total fail. The entire new Facebook interface sucks. Two hours since posting and it’s still not appearing in my People timeline. A couple posts ago, after seeing the post in the Facebook app and on the Me Tile, the post disappeared entirely. I had to recreate it on my desktop at the office when I got in. I can see this my post on my Me Tile (even that took 5-10 minutes to propagate), but nowhere else. I am getting comments, so I ASS U ME that others can see it. But this never, ever happened before 8.1. And what’s this shit with opening the Facebook interface every single time I click on a post. I have to wait several seconds each time. And of course it opens to the last comment, so I have to scroll up to the top before I start reading.
Since loading 8.1, I would estimate that I using Facebook about 50%less than with 8.0. Not that I am a big FB user (maybe 4-5 posts a month and less than 40 Friends). The old WP8.0 FB interface was damn near perfect. It was a pleasure to read posts and comments. And adding new posts was a breeze. Now, well, it sucks! No personal experience here, but I am guessing it works more like iOS or Android. How I feel for what you have all be going through all these years.
Just speculating here, but I would venture that the Facebook team responsible for aggregating our personal data and then selling it, or compiling it for ad revenue, outnumbers the UX team by about 10-1. Data Collection Team; bright cheery office space with sun beaming through the tinted glass and plenty of bottled natural spring water. UX Team; basement cubicles (recycled from the last bi-yearly refresh upstairs), stale, dank air, and a 5 gallon jug filled with purified water.
Some have said that it’s great that Microsoft has separated the FB interface from the OS. You know, so it’s easier to update. Sounds like “spin” to me And a big load of bullshit. I am guessing this is how it went down about six months ago:
Unimportant Senior Manager: Hey Zuck, Microsoft sent us one of those new Nokia WP phones to play with. The social stuff is really slick. Everything is fast and clean. If I didn’t see the FB post I uploaded a few minutes ago, I wouldn’t even know I was looking at Facebook. A really nice user experience.
Zuck: Really! Let me see that. (Thumbs through the People hub for a minute)
Zuck: Cindy, get that Joe guy from Microsoft on the phone for me. If you can’t get him, get one of the bald guys.
Joe: Hey there Mark, Joe Belfiore here. What can I do for you.
Zuck: Yeah ok. I was just looking at one of your Windows Phones and ….
Joe: …..jumps in. Yeah, they are some really nice phones with lots of great features. Have you tried the camera yet?
Zuck: Right. Here’s the thing. I don’t like the way your stealing Facebook on your phone. I’m going to give you 90 days…..no, make that 60 days, to change your UX so that MY Facebook is integrated everywhere. I want people viewing posts via FB. I want them commenting via FB. I want them using MY Facebook for everything! If you don’t get this done, I AM GOING TO BLOCK FACEBOOK FROM ALL YOUR SHITTY PHONES! Got it.
Joe: Got it.
Zuck: (Hangs up) Cindy, call down to HR and tell them to fire Unimportant Senior Manager. Got it.
Cindy: Got it.
Zuck: And where’s my latte.
I know complaining about this is a waste of time, cause there is no going back to the way it was. Nothing more than fond memory now. But I really needed to vent.
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Couldn’t agree more. They castrated the hubs. What made windows phone different was simply dumped. My theory is they were infiltrated by someone from Google/Apple and they are slowly destroying the framework. It started when the zune desktop app stopped syncing with the new phones.
I miss the integration in the Me tile. The FB sucks less than it did, but it still sucks.
I feel absolutely similar. This new integration is absolutely useless. It sucks.
I feel the same way. I’ve just defaulted to using JDB for Facebook. Albeit flawed, its better than the official and beta apps.
Thank you! Been saying t his since 8.1 dropped. I do not like it anymore. And considering all the “moves” fb is, and has been trying to make I can’t help it’s because they want their “brand” all over the place. Where there is brand pushing there is money to be made.
But what I don’t get is the people hub in W8.1 works basically the same WP used to… Why change things on the phone??
I totally agree with you and would like to see more people standing up and calling out Microsoft instead of clearly regurgitating what the PR and marketing departments are spewing out.
I am not a acid user of Facebook on the desktop. However, on Windows Phone 7 and 8 I would post almost daily. Back when Windows Phone 7 I can remember the Windows Phone Challenge. I loved posting via Windows Phone.
Fast forward to now. My last post on Facebook was about two weeks ago and that was from my PC. Why? The exact reasons you stated above. Posting pictures, videos, and updates are a pain in the butt, if they even work at all. And forget about changing your profile pic, gone.
I’ve also noticed I don’t stay up to date with friends and families pages as much either. Mostly because of the hassle of reading ninety percent of a post in the hub and then having to wait for the official app to crawl open, only to find out the hub was only missing one word. Come on!
This was the feature I would use to lure people from IOS and Android with. Now, well, we have Cortana, right. She’s cool.
The new lack of fb integration is one of the features that bugs me about 8.1. They are trying to be like ios or android. But what they don’t realize is that alot of people are using Windows phone because of the fact that they weren’t like the other two main mobile operating systems.