5 reasons why Facebook sucks
April 16, 2008

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So Facebook allows its users to import content into their newsfeeds now? Competing with aggregators like Friendfeed?
Big deal. The service is already loaded with features that provide no value, so adding a new one isn’t going to make it
any better. Let me provide you with five reasons I personally don’t like Facebook very much (hey, it’s just my opinion).

Facebook is a large walled garden that allows users in but never, ever let’s them out.

Even after deletion fo an account your data is still within the Facebook databases. Moving to another service with your
data is impossible. Getting your data out leads to account deletion (not data deletion, that remains with Facebook). I
don’t like customer lock-in, I want customer freedom.

Facebook is based upon a flawed business model.

They use the free but ad-based business model which is fine when you are a giant search company, but really sucks
when your main objective should be allowing your users to interact. There is no place for ads in interaction. It’s
merely trespassing in conversations between friends.
Facebook newsfeeds are highly overrated.



They might have been the first to implement them, but the newsfeed sucks. I recently took a picture of my own newsfeed
and it has learned me that one of my friends is playing Scrabble, three people added an application, someone had changed
his profile picture (which was sort of obvious as I could already see that it had changed), and some advertisement for large
Facebook groups I should be in. I’m not interested to read ‘Alexander went to movie X”. I’m interested in personal message
like “Hey, I went to movie X last night. Had a great time, you should go see it too”. The first message was an Orwellian
Facebook Big Brother is watching you headline. The second one was a personal message from a friend. Pick the one you
like best.

Facebook is spam.



Can’t say it any clearer. While a lot of Facebook’s intentions (and those that create Facebook applications), might be to
provide the user a good time, it is spammy as hell. I get a lot of requests to look at things my friends send me, only to
find out I need to forward it to other friends too. Often even before I get to see the content. I don’t want to harass my
friends with that. Which reminds me that I need to talk to the person sending me that stuff too

Facebook is about data hogging, not about user value

Facebook isn’t there to provide its users with value. It is there to collect all the data it can get out of you, your social
graph, your actions inside and outside the walled garden. It needs to do this in order to fuel it’s business model (that
is why the business model is wrong). Facebook shouldn’t be hogging data, they should be providing user value. Instead
of customer lock-in, they should be thinking about customer freedom. Instead of importing feeds from other sites,
they should be opening up themselves to third parties. Instead of locking me down they should allow me to leave if I
want to and taking my friends and data wherever I want to go. But they don’t, and you already know why.