>>"Everytime I look at Facebook I am reminded of how little Facebook cares about me. So, I care less and less about Facebook every day."
Yeah, I get a similar feeling too - and they really should be approaching more people for feedback (yourself included) - it would help them seem more connected to their users! I think MySpace might have 'missed the boat' because Facebook has done a more tidy job of being a social network (more sociable, and slightly less spam-filled with random strangers....slightly!) - all this means MySpace has got to play catchup in some respects. I can't comment on Zude as I don't know much about it. Yeah - if ever there was a good reason for OpenSocial, then it is certainly to bypass the nonsense of having all these separate networks which do all the same sort of thing!
solo500
· 2 years ago
Hey,
FSJ has taken a few whacks at the old Scoble pinata (Scob-ata?) and this is the first public response I can think of on it. It easy being public and this is a pretty graceful way to take your lumps.
The day I realized I check FSJ before NYT for news was humbling...
solo500
· 2 years ago
"It's NOT easy being public" --correction. (think: It's not easy being green" by Kermit
Dom
· 2 years ago
Can somebody invent something where I can click a button and transfer my Facebook stuff to another site?
I would like that very much. Very, very much...
Dan Blank
· 2 years ago
Robert - it is interesting that these companies must begin to realize that as people share more personal information on a social network like Facebook, there is an expectation of personal caring from the company to the individual. Would you have had the same expectation of NBC or Coke a decade or two ago?
Geoff Livingston
· 2 years ago
Facebook has lost its soul, man. They've lost their way, and someone else is going to come along who better understands communities and serve us. Community and people make social media tick, not networks. This is too new of a medium for any network to get a total lock.
PXLated
· 2 years ago
I wonder what would happen if, as you, people really showed their Facebook displeasure and even left. How fast could that $15B pseudo valuation be cut in half. Could Facebook be made the poster boy for future stupid, uncaring companies? Could they be made the example of "the customer is in charge"?
Steve Poppe
· 2 years ago
People build communities. Technology companies build tools. Marketers build markets. Facebook is blurring the lines and, therefore, losing focus. Zude’s focus is user freedom. We give people tools and let them decide what to build. We try not to cross the line. It's a Webertarian thing.
Matt Robin
· 2 years ago
Steve Poppe: Hey, I've just taken a look at Zude (linked from here) - just a quick question: is the appearance going to be improved?
I mean I burst in to laughter just looking at the first page! Are you serious? Four different fonts...just in the name alone and a mess of colors that don't go together! It gives the impression of being a poor MySpace wannabe! Maybe you guys are still working on it...
I think it will be very interesting to see the outcome of the trial - Facebook may win, but Zuckerberg's reputation will certainly be damaged with what's uncovered. And that won't work well with ad partners and users.
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
>Would you have had the same expectation of NBC or Coke a decade or two ago?
Well, let's talk about Coke. They sell sweetened water, not social networks.
But Coca Cola has an open-to-the-public museum where you can come and ask any stupid question and a Coke employee will answer it nicely without trying to control you or tell you to turn off your video camera (every tour ends with a mock press conference where they take questions from everyone and you can leave your video camera running). I know, I asked them whether it really was true that Coke used cocaine in its products in the early years. They admitted that they had used leaves from the plant.
So, what did that translate to? Coke demonstrated that they'd stand up and take questions from ANYONE, not just reporters from Business Week.
It sure makes me think that Coke cares about me as a customer. A LOT more than Facebook does.
The museum is in Atlanta, GA and it's a must see if you go there. If you do they even let you try all of its products for free including some weird watermelon-flavored stuff they sell in China.
Matt Lutze
· 2 years ago
It's off-topic, but I've gotta agree with Matt Robin above. Zude is seriously lacking in the "we actually have an idea what our presentation should be," department. Not only is there no color palette, but the site is optimized for aggressively-wide displays, as in if you're not using a W/S laptop or a big monitor, you gotta scroll all over. Not cool.
Facebook lost its soul the minute it stopped being university-restrictive. When they stopped requiring .edu E-mail addresses for registration was the day they let the wolves in to devour what uniqueness FB had, making it just another advertising venue. It's too bad greed can ruin such a good thing.
JohnJones
· 2 years ago
facebook has lost some of it's vava voom recently
Its clean design has been polluted by themselves
they have had big scaleability problems but nothing major what concern's advertisers is the return...
they did well on the "fan" stakes but really should have looked elsewhere this is taken up by myspace and their bands... as well as iLike
what they should have gone for is recommendations... e.g. I would recommend watching Top Gear (from the BBC) I would recommend buying a VW beetle (1.6 liters good MPG)
Since when is parody defined as attacking someone? It seems to me that unless someone writes about you in fawning terms, you interpret it as being attacked.
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Blake: I see in Fake Steve's writings both parody AND attacks. But it's cool if you think this stuff is written without any intent to attack. I don't.
dsheardown
· 2 years ago
You should chat to Om Malik - he had FSJ on GigaOm TV... Maybe we could petition FSJ to come onto the Scoble show Yeah!
Anyway, facebook: What do you do? I'm mid-late 30's and don't really have time for Facebook, although as part of another project I am finding it interesting how facebook works (not just technically of course). But I guess this is a sign of the "must consume/must get more" world - i.e. Facebook's current advertising (i.e their Flyers etc and Ad-Words/whatever) obviously has a mapped trajectory re: income and obviously Facebook needs to consume more...
I just wonder where the limit is on "normal" advertising (i.e. ad-words again etc) and if facebook could be sustained just on that?
I guess Beacon was a way to expedite the revenue model some!
Laura "@Pistachio" Fitton
· 2 years ago
In comment #12 -- that subtle little link about the lawsuit? -- reading an article on that sent all kind of shivers & echoes of familiarity down my spine. The overall tone of not being responsive, accountable, transparent. Huh. Not saying a personality flaw could become the downfall of an entire, and rather large SocialMediaNetworkCompany, but it sets a certain tone, doesn't it?
***
Oh and FSJ mentions that becoming a blogger was a direct result of that article trashing blogs that he wrote. Even as it was going to press he saw that, and the experience led right into playing around with blogging.
Dan Blank
· 2 years ago
Robert - with regards to the Coke Museum, I actually JUST arrived in Atlanta, for a three day conference for the company I work for. Unfortunately, it is a tight schedule, but a pretty funny coincidence.
I have read and enjoyed Naked Conversations, and certainly love your blog, and the ideas you express (mostly.) You seems to be pretty disgruntled with Facebook for not treating you like BusinessWeek or the Wall Street Journal. What is the learning curve for marketers and businesses to place the same value on individual bloggers/journalists, as they would on a firmly established news organization?
Thanks. -Dan
JimBob
· 2 years ago
You have a very interesting Blog, and hard to pinpoint,... obscurity about your writing-which is deep, and goes deeper. Hadn't heard about your blog since the "Apple Advertising..." link in the FSJ site a few weeks back. Initially it seemed like you where a young-loose cannon, new disappointed customer to Apple falling for their advertising, ranting. YET. as the well goes deeper(and looking you up on Wikipdia and other online sites-finding your somewhat famous) you had worked on Apple II's back to the 80's and rebuilt/networked with them, worked for many other companies and had much other technological experiences, and were just a few years older than myself. Very ELABORARE, Deep, and cunning in of itself to set a trap of unknowing feedback. You have some good stories and info about tech and "the valley"with a interesting twist and take. Helpful info to someone in the midwest outside Chicago. A good read indeed. Thanks.
JimBob
· 2 years ago
...make that every ELABORATE,..not Elaborare...
raincoaster
· 2 years ago
Did Facebook HAVE a soul in the first place? It had an identity from the start: MySpace for the Ivy League. Then it became MySpace for the officer class. Then MySpace for executive trainees. Then MySpace for grownups...like LinkedIn, but with more gossip and stuff that could get you fired.
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Dan: actually if you talk with journalists from those organizations they have the same complaints that I do. Getting anyone to talk at Facebook is pretty tough. I watched how some of these journalists were treated by Zuckerberg and PR. They don't get much more than I did.
I'm mostly disgruntled by their poor technology that limits me to 5,000 friends. MySpace, Plaxo, and other social networks don't have that limitation.
Podesta
· 2 years ago
Jim/Bob are you on meth? What's with the sycophancy? Robert Scoble wanting more attention to be paid to Robert Scoble is quite the norm for him. It never crosses his mind that he has not done anything to merit additional attention. (Indeed, one can argue that he doesn't deserve most of the attention he gets.)
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Podesta: you just paid more attention to me. Hope that helps! :-)
David
· 2 years ago
Funny, after falling in Love with Facebook for the last few months, I suddenly detest it after the Beacon fiasco. I think they are doomed..and Myspace is actually starting to look like a better place (shudder)
I can't believe how FB pressures people to use their real identity and then just completely violates IT like that. I'm getting angrier as I Type.
TO HADES WITH FACEBOOK!!!
Alex Beamish
· 2 years ago
>> 2. Everytime he links he sends boatloads of traffic. I don’t know why I love that, but it makes me happy to see that Fake Steve Jobs has boatloads more readers than Valleywag does (Valleywag says they have tons of traffic, but they don’t click on anything. I’ve been on both sites dozens of times and FSJ’s audience clicks at 20x the rate that Valleywag’s does). <<
Hi,
I'm a counter-example -- I read Valleywag (hilarious, for the technically minded, in the same vein as The Inquirer) but this is (I think) my first visit to your blog. The only other time I hear about you is when Mathew Ingram mentions you.
Cheers, Alex
Laura Moncur
· 2 years ago
You seem to have a lot of anger and bile. Maybe you need a REAL break.
Escape to Utah. You and your family can crash at our place and you can hide from all of them for a while.
It's better here, believe me.
Karim
· 2 years ago
I know, I asked them whether it really was true that Coke used cocaine in its products in the early years.
I am tempted to channel FSJ and ask if you asked the Facetards the same question.
Just kidding! Though you have to wonder if having every web site on earth update Facebook with an entry every time you'd purchased a pair of pink frilly socks in women's size 10 wasn't drug inspired. "Say hello to my little Javascript!"
Namaste.
Some Guy
· 2 years ago
" He’s a lot better writer than I am"
Yeah, he's what they call a professional.
Kevin
· 2 years ago
"Facebook but Facebook doesn’t care about people who have more than 5,000 friends unless they can figure out a way to monetize us."
Or it could be you are a corner case to facebook and it's not worth their dev and test time to build a feature very few in the world would use?
I want Ford to build a pick up with a 32in plasma TV, speakers, a bar, a barbecue, and satellite dish. But they won't so I guess they don't care about me.
"With Facebook I just am reminded that there’s more than 1,000 people that I can’t help because of Facebook’s lame scalability issues"
So you view yourself as the Mother Teresa of Facebook?
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Some Guy: you might have missed that I write for Fast Company now too. So I'm a professional too.
Kevin: one thing, though. Facebook used people like me to build the hype up around it, which brought it a huge valuation. MySpace doesn't have those limitations, has more users than Facebook does. What if all of the influentials decided that Facebook sucks? Will that valuation keep up? No.
Facebook is the only major social network with such a lame technical limitation that I know of. So, your analogy doesn't hold. It's like GM, Mercedes, BMW, Toyota and others are already building such a pickup truck for you and you'd like to stick with Ford, but they aren't building you the truck you want.
Me? I'm moving.
FSJ for President
· 2 years ago
First. FSJ has been around for a few years, not one. And I'm one of the pathetic folks that is absolutely hooked on his blog. I was broken when he was 'outed' earlier this year.
Second. You nailed Facebook. Outside of all of their technical and functionality failures the biggest disappointment of the year was them grabbing/projecting the ridiculous 15B market cap. Good luck breaking over the top of that valuation and pitching to your new hires that there will be upside to their equity they receive. With options based on an insane 15b mark....only dummies will join with any hope of upside. Think about that one and write it up.
All Comments
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=147559803...
Yeah, I get a similar feeling too - and they really should be approaching more people for feedback (yourself included) - it would help them seem more connected to their users! I think MySpace might have 'missed the boat' because Facebook has done a more tidy job of being a social network (more sociable, and slightly less spam-filled with random strangers....slightly!) - all this means MySpace has got to play catchup in some respects. I can't comment on Zude as I don't know much about it. Yeah - if ever there was a good reason for OpenSocial, then it is certainly to bypass the nonsense of having all these separate networks which do all the same sort of thing!
FSJ has taken a few whacks at the old Scoble pinata (Scob-ata?) and this is the first public response I can think of on it. It easy being public and this is a pretty graceful way to take your lumps.
The day I realized I check FSJ before NYT for news was humbling...
I would like that very much. Very, very much...
I mean I burst in to laughter just looking at the first page! Are you serious? Four different fonts...just in the name alone and a mess of colors that don't go together! It gives the impression of being a poor MySpace wannabe! Maybe you guys are still working on it...
http://www.02138mag.com/magazine/article/1724.html
I think it will be very interesting to see the outcome of the trial - Facebook may win, but Zuckerberg's reputation will certainly be damaged with what's uncovered. And that won't work well with ad partners and users.
Well, let's talk about Coke. They sell sweetened water, not social networks.
But Coca Cola has an open-to-the-public museum where you can come and ask any stupid question and a Coke employee will answer it nicely without trying to control you or tell you to turn off your video camera (every tour ends with a mock press conference where they take questions from everyone and you can leave your video camera running). I know, I asked them whether it really was true that Coke used cocaine in its products in the early years. They admitted that they had used leaves from the plant.
So, what did that translate to? Coke demonstrated that they'd stand up and take questions from ANYONE, not just reporters from Business Week.
It sure makes me think that Coke cares about me as a customer. A LOT more than Facebook does.
The museum is in Atlanta, GA and it's a must see if you go there. If you do they even let you try all of its products for free including some weird watermelon-flavored stuff they sell in China.
Facebook lost its soul the minute it stopped being university-restrictive. When they stopped requiring .edu E-mail addresses for registration was the day they let the wolves in to devour what uniqueness FB had, making it just another advertising venue. It's too bad greed can ruin such a good thing.
Its clean design has been polluted by themselves
they have had big scaleability problems but nothing major what concern's advertisers is the return...
they did well on the "fan" stakes but really should have looked elsewhere this is taken up by myspace and their bands... as well as iLike
what they should have gone for is recommendations... e.g.
I would recommend watching Top Gear (from the BBC)
I would recommend buying a VW beetle (1.6 liters good MPG)
that would actually make sense
regards
john.jones.name
http://www.johnjones.me.uk
Anyway, facebook: What do you do? I'm mid-late 30's and don't really have time for Facebook, although as part of another project I am finding it interesting how facebook works (not just technically of course). But I guess this is a sign of the "must consume/must get more" world - i.e. Facebook's current advertising (i.e their Flyers etc and Ad-Words/whatever) obviously has a mapped trajectory re: income and obviously Facebook needs to consume more...
I just wonder where the limit is on "normal" advertising (i.e. ad-words again etc) and if facebook could be sustained just on that?
I guess Beacon was a way to expedite the revenue model some!
***
Oh and FSJ mentions that becoming a blogger was a direct result of that article trashing blogs that he wrote. Even as it was going to press he saw that, and the experience led right into playing around with blogging.
I have read and enjoyed Naked Conversations, and certainly love your blog, and the ideas you express (mostly.) You seems to be pretty disgruntled with Facebook for not treating you like BusinessWeek or the Wall Street Journal. What is the learning curve for marketers and businesses to place the same value on individual bloggers/journalists, as they would on a firmly established news organization?
Thanks.
-Dan
Hadn't heard about your blog since the "Apple Advertising..." link in the FSJ site a few weeks back.
Initially it seemed like you where a young-loose cannon, new disappointed customer to Apple falling for their advertising, ranting. YET. as the well goes deeper(and looking you up on Wikipdia and other online sites-finding your somewhat famous) you had worked on Apple II's back to the 80's and rebuilt/networked with them, worked for many other companies and had much other technological experiences, and were just a few years older than myself.
Very ELABORARE, Deep, and cunning in of itself to set a trap of unknowing feedback. You have some good stories and info about tech and "the valley"with a interesting twist and take. Helpful info to someone in the midwest outside Chicago. A good read indeed. Thanks.
I'm mostly disgruntled by their poor technology that limits me to 5,000 friends. MySpace, Plaxo, and other social networks don't have that limitation.
I can't believe how FB pressures people to use their real identity and then just completely violates IT like that. I'm getting angrier as I Type.
TO HADES WITH FACEBOOK!!!
Hi,
I'm a counter-example -- I read Valleywag (hilarious, for the technically minded, in the same vein as The Inquirer) but this is (I think) my first visit to your blog. The only other time I hear about you is when Mathew Ingram mentions you.
Cheers,
Alex
Escape to Utah. You and your family can crash at our place and you can hide from all of them for a while.
It's better here, believe me.
I am tempted to channel FSJ and ask if you asked the Facetards the same question.
Just kidding! Though you have to wonder if having every web site on earth update Facebook with an entry every time you'd purchased a pair of pink frilly socks in women's size 10 wasn't drug inspired. "Say hello to my little Javascript!"
Namaste.
Yeah, he's what they call a professional.
Or it could be you are a corner case to facebook and it's not worth their dev and test time to build a feature very few in the world would use?
I want Ford to build a pick up with a 32in plasma TV, speakers, a bar, a barbecue, and satellite dish. But they won't so I guess they don't care about me.
"With Facebook I just am reminded that there’s more than 1,000 people that I can’t help because of Facebook’s lame scalability issues"
So you view yourself as the Mother Teresa of Facebook?
Kevin: one thing, though. Facebook used people like me to build the hype up around it, which brought it a huge valuation. MySpace doesn't have those limitations, has more users than Facebook does. What if all of the influentials decided that Facebook sucks? Will that valuation keep up? No.
Facebook is the only major social network with such a lame technical limitation that I know of. So, your analogy doesn't hold. It's like GM, Mercedes, BMW, Toyota and others are already building such a pickup truck for you and you'd like to stick with Ford, but they aren't building you the truck you want.
Me? I'm moving.
Second. You nailed Facebook. Outside of all of their technical and functionality failures the biggest disappointment of the year was them grabbing/projecting the ridiculous 15B market cap. Good luck breaking over the top of that valuation and pitching to your new hires that there will be upside to their equity they receive. With options based on an insane 15b mark....only dummies will join with any hope of upside. Think about that one and write it up.