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Facebook User Satisfaction Is 'Abysmal'

adeelarshad82 writes "American Customer Satisfaction Index recently conducted a survey in which they found that even though Facebook is gaining popularity, they are doing a miserable job of keeping their users satisfied. According to the survey Facebook scored 64 out of 100 for customer satisfaction, which puts the website in line with the satisfaction rates for airlines and cable companies. The survey also includes other websites like YouTube and Wikipedia (which scored considerably higher) and MySpace, which came in slightly lower. (The survey did not include Twitter since many of its members access the site through third-party sites rather than Twitter.com.) The ACSI was founded at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, and is based on annual interviews with about 70,000 customers. The group has measured portals and search engines in the past, as well as news and information websites, but this is the first year the ACSI included social networking sites." UM professor Claes Fornell blogged: "Controversies over privacy issues, frequent changes to user interfaces, and increasing commercialization have positioned the big social networking sites at satisfaction levels well below other Web sites..."

289 comments

  1. Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by eldavojohn · · Score: 4, Informative
    Reported on this five hours before the one they selected but, meh, you win some you lose some. Anyway, in case anyone's interested in more numbers:

    A new report from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) has put Facebook just above the taxman on America's lists. Out of 30 online companies, the two absolute worst were MySpace with 63 out of 100 and Facebook at 64 but other high scoring sites included Wikipedia (77) and YouTube (73). Unsurprisingly the report reveals that of the 233 companies they monitor year round, MySpace and Facebook are in the bottom 5% for customer satisfaction. That puts them with airlines and cable companies--two historically low ranked industries of customer satisfaction. You can see a brief overview of the scores and also note that on search engines, Bing hits 77 just behind Google at 80 for customer satisfaction. The full report with an overview of why consumers were satisfied or dissatisfied with each site can be found here in PDF.

    Seriously, MySpace and Facebook are down there with cable companies and airlines. And their service is (on the surface) free. Must be doing a terrible job.

    UM professor Claes Fornell blogged: "Controversies over privacy issues, frequent changes to user interfaces, and increasing commercialization have positioned the big social networking sites at satisfaction levels well below other Web sites..."

    Oh, if only it ended there--he missed news feed control problems, advertising, spam, navigation issues and annoying applications. From the actual report:

    When asked what they like least about Facebook, survey respondents gave answers including privacy and security concerns, the technology that controls the news feeds, advertising, the constant and unpredictable interface changes, spam, navigation troubles, annoying applications with constant notifications, and functionality, to name a few. There is no shortage of complaints about Facebook.

    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by A.+B3ttik · · Score: 0

      And yet EVERYONE uses it anyway. They must like something about it.

      I think it's great. Of course I don't run ANY apps and I use Adblock.

    2. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by PopeRatzo · · Score: 0

      And yet EVERYONE uses it anyway.

      "Everyone"?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    3. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by TheLink · · Score: 1

      Maybe most facebook users are too busy playing farmville or whatever to do their survey?

      --
    4. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by Tikkun · · Score: 2, Informative

      "Everyone"?

      In the same sense that and for similar reasons why, "everyone" uses Windows on the desktop: Network effects.

    5. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by umghhh · · Score: 2, Insightful

      we may also need to state what 'use' means - I 'use' it because I was silly enough to make an account. I was annoyed enough not to frequent this site because of issues as in FA and because if I want to mail with my friends I do it with mail, if I want to talk with them I do it off line, etc etc. There was only one exception when I found it useful as I could keep contact with an old friend but that was offset by negative experiences of which one overwhelms all the others: software quality. Maybe because I worked in QA for years or maybe this is a flaw in my character (and reason I spent so many years in QA...) but when I see crappy till not usable interfaces I get annoyed. The bottom line: FB is in my eyes a waste of time. At /. at least we have working (most of the time) interfaces. I think popularity of FB says something about society and it is not a nice thing at all.....

    6. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What I want to know is, how did they control for the fact that Facebook users are RETARDED?

      2000+ comments that couldn't tell the difference between a blog and the Facebook login page. Can you imagine what you'd think if 2000 people showed up at your door and were irate that it wasn't a bank?

    7. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by Conchobair · · Score: 1

      I am proud to say I do not use facebook.

    8. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Parent is short, but mod it up. Network effects explain the high use of facebook in the face of low customer satisfaction. Network effects result in a low-competition situation similar to a monopoly here.

      TFA mentions cable and airlines as historically low-ranking, but it's important to realize that those two industries, with relatively low competition and high levels of tacit collusion, are merely acting in a rational way in response to the market, as is facebook. Consumers are forced to buy from a specific provider or one of a small set of oligopolists, so the choice is between a poorly-run, inefficient company or no service at all. When the price is opaque (as with airline fares+fees or facebook's extraction of value from 'private' data), it's even more difficult to compete on things consumers actually value. This is great for the companies, bad for consumers, and it's why we have institutions like the FTC.

      Fortunately,we can expect some competition for facebook as long as network neutrality prevents them from owning or colluding with the firms who control our infrastructure in some way designed to eliminate choice and the possibility of competitors (or, barring that, we can hope antitrust law keeps this market, like most, relatively well-functioning).

    9. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Both my mother *and* my grandmother use Facebook.

      That's good enough for me to accept "EVERYONE uses it" as truth.

    10. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by BitZtream · · Score: 1

      And you both missed the facts.

      You are not Facebook's customer.

      The people buying your information from Facebook are the customer.

      You are the product.

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    11. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And yet EVERYONE uses it anyway.

      "Everyone"?

      Yep, everyone. You've even got an account there. Updated regularly and accurately, too. The fact that you're not aware of that does not change things. See the aforementioned privacy issues. ;-)

    12. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I don't use Facebook, either.

      However, a position like this sort of smack of the stereotypical Slashdot nerd boast:

      "I watch no television at all."

      (incidentally, I watch almost no television at all, but it's not a matter of pride to me)

    13. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by sonciwind · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Free? I don't think so. You pay with your privacy and your attention. The mistaken idea that that = free is one of the main concepts that actually reduces the actual freedom of individuals in this country.

    14. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by franki.macha · · Score: 1

      I also don't use Facebook, nor own a television. But that's simply because I have no friends or money.

    15. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by PopeRatzo · · Score: 0, Redundant

      In the same sense that and for similar reasons why, "everyone" uses Windows on the desktop: Network effects [wikipedia.org].

      Please explain how the Network Effect creates a condition whereby "everyone" uses Facebook.

      From what I've just read using your link, I don't see how you make that jump. Yes, having 500million users makes Facebook more valuable than if it had 200 million users, which is how the Network Effect is defined, but that still doesn't explain how it can now be said that "everyone" is using a service that at most 500 million people use. That's not even "most" of the world's internet users. Considering that there are many people with multiple facebook accounts, and many facebook accounts are for non-individual entities, like radio programs, bands, companies, etc., you're probably looking at less than 1/4 of all internet users, assuming the recent statistic of approximately 2 billion internet users is accurate.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    16. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

      I don't either but my wife and my sister do. So if I need a message sent to my sister I ask my wife to do it for me. If she wasn't willing to do that I would probably need to register on facebook.

    17. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Want a medal?

    18. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by ukyoCE · · Score: 1

      "Uses it" isn't as binary as you make it sound. I'm sure everyone has a few friends that spend all day on it, but the majority of users seem to avoid actually going there unless forced to by an e-mail notification of something specifically pertaining to them (eg. a private message or photo tagged of them). Having lots of signups doesn't mean as much as having the users actively visiting your site.

    19. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Uh, does your sister not have an e-mail account?

    20. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

      Email is so 2009. Haven't you heard?

    21. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by greentshirt · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If missing the obvious point and making a slashdot-funny is your automatic reaction to a fairly straight-forward comment, perhaps you're the one who should be going out and making some actual friends.

      The parents observation was that two generations worth of his immediate family members use Facebook, and that he sees that as sufficient proof that the service has a wide appeal and is broadly used. But don't let what's obvious get in the way of snarky comment.

    22. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Free? I don't think so. You pay with your privacy and your attention. The mistaken idea that that = free is one of the main concepts that actually reduces the actual freedom of individuals in this country.

      Yeah hence the "(on the surface)" comment.

    23. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm pretty satisfied with Facebook. Not sure what the problem is.

    24. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by ooshna · · Score: 1

      To do that he has to leave his mom's basement. And just b/c he has to share a room with Grammy is no reason to put him down either.

    25. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by Risen888 · · Score: 1

      Ah, everyone you live with?

      --
      Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
    26. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by smee2 · · Score: 1

      My mother, my children and my grandchildren all use Facebook - enough for me to accept "everyone uses it" too.

    27. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Free? I don't think so. You pay with your privacy and your attention. The mistaken idea that that = free is one of the main concepts that actually reduces the actual freedom of individuals in this country.

      Hence "their service is (on the surface) free" in the original post. Still, you are not compelled to join Facebook in the same way you may be compelled to take a national ID card or anything else that government does (let's also remember that Facebook isn't limited to America). Failing to realize the privacy consequences might undermine our rights as individuals, but it does not really reduce our freedom.

      (Also, you might want to avoid using "actual" and "actually" together, if not avoid them entirely. "Actual" really only has a place when illustrating the opposite of "potential" or perhaps "theoretical." You made no reference to "possible freedom," and in context it doesn't make much sense, so there's no need for the extraneous word. I apologize for being a grammar nazi, but I am drunk and disheartened by the decadence of our discourse.)

    28. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by sinclair44 · · Score: 1

      The people buying your information from Facebook are the customer.

      What do you mean, exactly? Facebook does not sell any user information:

      We have designed Facebook to provide relevant and interesting advertising content to you in a way that protects your privacy completely. We never share your personal information with advertisers. We never sell your personal information to anyone. These protections are yours no matter what privacy settings you use; they apply equally to people who share openly with everyone and to people who share with only select friends.

      Source: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=403570307130

      --
      Omnes stulti sunt.
    29. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by Conchobair · · Score: 1

      So, when did it become wrong to have the insight to not use a service with terrible satisfaction levels? I don't think in this day and age when people are having so many issues with the service it is excessive to be satisfied with that fact. I brought it up as an on topic discussion about using facebook. So don't even compare it to TV. People don't really talk about not using TV besides you and the guy from The Onion. So yeah, you are still that guy that goes out of his way to mention he does not watch TV, this time by high-jacking someone's post about facebook.

    30. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Typical post from a 1,6XX,XXX user.

      Shut the fuck up and go back to the newspaper forums, OK?

    31. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by imakemusic · · Score: 1

      Congratulations. Have a cookie.

      --
      Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
    32. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by gorzek · · Score: 1

      Do you get paid to be a pedant or do you just do it for fun?

      Yes, not "everyone" uses Facebook, but it is still the #1 social networking site in the US by a large margin with at least 400M users. Myspace, by comparison, has about 130M users. There is no social networking service in the English-speaking world that even approaches Facebook's market share. For crying out loud, their Alexa page rank is two. How much more popular do they need to be before we can generalize and say "everyone"?

      I realize that with most Slashdotters being technically inclined, we prefer precision in language, but there are instances like this one where it is well-understood what is meant by a particular statement ("everyone uses Facebook") even if the statement itself is an exaggeration of the facts.

    33. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by mdwh2 · · Score: 1

      Yes - it's how she receives the email from Facebook, telling her that there's a message from MichaelSmith's wife.

    34. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by mdwh2 · · Score: 1

      He still got an account before you did.

    35. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by PopeRatzo · · Score: 0, Troll

      Do you get paid to be a pedant or do you just do it for fun?

      I'm strictly amateur. I do it for the love.

      I realize that with most Slashdotters being technically inclined, we prefer precision in language, but there are instances like this one where it is well-understood what is meant by a particular statement ("everyone uses Facebook") even if the statement itself is an exaggeration of the facts.

      Brother, there are times when it's more important to be precise than to "just go along" with this notion that "everyone uses Facebook". I don't mind a little linguistic imprecision, but that particular statement is particularly offensive to me.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    36. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by kLaNk · · Score: 1

      On /., everyone is a pedantic asshole.

    37. Re:Bottom 5% with Cable and Airlines by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, not everyone. Just the anonymous cowards.

  2. Comment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    i like it

  3. That's good right? by Hatta · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If the user's ever satisfied, he'll stop clicking. Keeping satisfaction one click away seems to be Facebook's entire business model.

    --
    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    1. Re:That's good right? by gbjbaanb · · Score: 2, Interesting

      sounds like software in general.... want a working feature.. that'll be in the next version that you'll want to upgrade to.

    2. Re:That's good right? by Alwin+Henseler · · Score: 1

      If the user's ever satisfied, he'll stop clicking.

      Hmmm... I always thought: "If you keep users happy, they'll come back for more!". But maybe that's just old-fashioned.

    3. Re:That's good right? by Jorl17 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      User: I ain't clickin' ye
      Facebook: Yesssssss....yessss you AAAARE.

      Doesn't seem likely.

      --
      Have you heard about SoylentNews?
    4. Re:That's good right? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not satisfied as in wtf my chat disappeared and I can't talk to my friend.

    5. Re:That's good right? by Voyager529 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The issue is that in the good ol' days, there was much less lock-in. To a certain extent, that's true as well. If a waitress is rude to me at Applebees, I won't eat there anymore. If a can of soup is not to my liking, I'll purchase a different brand. If my web hosting company treats me poorly, I'll switch to another provider. In these cases, one pays directly for a service with no intertia to overcome.

      By contrast, Facebook is where all of my friends are. Its private messaging function has largely replaced personal e-mail. My cell phone integrates seamlessly with Facebook and automatically updates their status, their photo, and their birthday in my calendar (as well as any events that I RSVP as attending). There are people with whom the only method of communication I have with them is through Facebook.

      In Facebook's defense, they solved a LOT of problems that Myspace had in its heydey. From simple things like requiring real names instead of handles to display to people ('cuz x0x0LaTiNaLoVeRx0x with a picture of a palm tree makes perfect sense to me), to issues with spam (I constantly got friend requests and messages from "18 and have a webcam" chiqs, rare if ever on FB), to not allowing custom HTML (have you seen some of the God-awful crap that people cut-and-pasted together? half the pages there took forever to load and looked like someone swalllowed all of Geocities and Xanga and vomited it onto a web server) to just a general community shift from being who you want people to think you are and begging for comments to just putting out there who you are and not having arguments over whether you're in someone's top 8 or not. It was really only a matter of time before the holes in Facebook's systems were exploited.

      Privacy issues are just inherent with giving a company - be it Facebook, Google, Microsoft, or whoever - the amount of personal data a typical Facebook page contains. I wonder how many people complaining about the security being slowly relaxed over time have actually made specifications as to what they want, or whether they have their own profiles on the defaults.

      The thing that irks me the most about Facebook with regards to privacy was how they defaulted to making your info available to basically everyone. Targeted ads within Facebook are one thing - bandwidth isn't free, and neither is hard disk space. I, for one, don't mind targeted ads. I'd much rather see an ad for the new Above and Beyond album than for Kotex. I do have an issue when I post a status update regarding owning an HTC phone, and suddenly half the banner ads on the websites I visit thereafter involve the latest HTC gear. That's just plain creepy, and yes, I turned it off once I realized that it was there.

      In summary, having users come back when they're happy is still accurate, except in cases when there is lock-in (cell phone numbers, e-mail addresses, Facebook accounts, heck even MS Windows [for those of us with substantial hardware/software investments]). By its nature, Facebook will remain the de facto standard for social networking until they both royally screw up AND have a viable competitor ready to catch their fall.

    6. Re:That's good right? by Aphoxema · · Score: 1

      sounds like software in general.... want a working feature.. that'll be in the next version that you'll want to upgrade to.

      The alternative is keeping up with compatibility for OS updates which also keeps you reaching for features.

      --
      "Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
    7. Re:That's good right? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This hit it right on the rivet head. I de-activated my Facebook account a while back, there is just too much in Facebook that can be done without all the ads, apps and other crud. For years Jabber has provided what the Facebook basics are doing, status updates, subscriptions, one-to-one and multi-user chat, uploading photos from my phone through a Jabber client direct to my on-line album so that people can see them on the web. All these things that used to be accessed with a [rich] client are being pushed into web services so you are locked in with no way out, I find it a bit sad really. People these days want to add me via Facebook rather than communicate with e-mail or IM, I hate it. No offence to any Facebook users but most people don't have a clue what else is out there and don't care, I'd rather use what's been the standard form of internet communication for the last couple decades than some new-fangled walled-garden web service. It took Facebook more than 2 years to implement Jabber as a chat option from when they made the announcement for it, I haven't looked in to it but they probably don't even allow server to server from other Jabber services so what's the point, more lock in.

    8. Re:That's good right? by mdwh2 · · Score: 1

      From simple things like requiring real names instead of handles to display to people ('cuz x0x0LaTiNaLoVeRx0x

      Said "Voyager529".

      I agree that Facebook is much improved over MySpace, but I don't think that this point is one of them. Requiring real names, as opposed to the long established Internet practice of using handles, is a risk for people's privacy, and also means that some people may restrict what they can talk about on Facebook, out of fear of family/potential-employers etc reading.

    9. Re:That's good right? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      MySpace? You mean Myspace. CamelCase is not standard English, douchenozzle.

    10. Re:That's good right? by Voyager529 · · Score: 1

      Requiring real names, as opposed to the long established Internet practice of using handles, is a risk for people's privacy, and also means that some people may restrict what they can talk about on Facebook, out of fear of family/potential-employers etc reading.

      I'ma kinda say "duh" on this one. Facebook (and Myspace before it), by the very nature of its existence, is designed to be almost "anti-anonymous". I have a Facebook so people *can* contact me that way as a digital extension of previously established relationships. If you don't want your family finding out that you were trashed in Vegas last weekend, either don't have them as Facebook friends, or don't post the photos on Facebook. If you want to share photos, add them to Flikr/Photobucket/Imageshack and give out the URL to whoever you want to view them. If I wanted to blog things concerning topics at variance with the pastors in my church (many of whom are my Facebook friends), I'd hit up Blogspot and make an anonymous blog where the anonymity you're speaking of is still alive and well.

      Joey

  4. Facebook already knows their users are unhappy by wandazulu · · Score: 1

    The question is whether they'd sell that information...Google perhaps?

  5. Yeah, but by halestock · · Score: 3, Funny

    does that include those who are dissatisfied because their parents added them as a friend?

    1. Re:Yeah, but by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yeah, it makes me wonder what people would respond as their satisfaction level of the world. Ask people, "Do you find yourself satisfied with your relationships with other people, or do you wish you had cooler friends? Do you like your job, or do you find it is more like work?" If Facebook is an attempt to map reality, then the closer it gets, the less likely people may be to be satisfied with it.

      Look beyond that! It's a religious principle. The first noble truth of Buddhism, sometimes translated: "Life is filled with a deep sense of unsatisfaction." It's Facebook against Buddha.

      Cable companies on the other hand have no excuse. There's no religious principle that says, "thou shalt overcharge for misrepresented crappy services." They are going to hell.

      --
      Qxe4
    2. Re:Yeah, but by Obfuscant · · Score: 3, Funny
      Do you find yourself satisfied with your relationships with other people,

      What is this "relationship" of which you speak? I am fascinated by this concept; please subscribe me to your newsletter.

      or do you wish you had cooler friends?

      What is this "friends" of which you speak? Do you cover this topic in your newsletter?

    3. Re:Yeah, but by vlm · · Score: 1

      If Facebook is an attempt to map reality,

      Then most people either want to be peasant farmers or mafia bosses?

      The weird part is, that may be true!

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    4. Re:Yeah, but by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 0

      I stopped watching TV on my TV, and ... my satisfaction is up 100% over last year when I had Cable.

      High Speed Internet provides a better experience for me. Between things like HULU and NETFLIX ... I get most of what I want, when I want it.

      I do miss a few things here and there, but not a whole lot.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    5. Re:Yeah, but by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah, the sad reality is that most people live incredibly boring lives (I mean, look at me, I'm posting on Slashdot). When your idea of excitement is going out and getting drunk, which is basically a way to escape reality, you know something is wrong. That matches a lot of people. A good portion of the rest stay home and pop pain-killers.

      Life is so much more exciting when you are doing things. Even if it is just planting a seed and watching it grow. I guarantee Linus Torvalds has a much more interesting and exciting life than Lindsay Lohan, even though hers is more what is traditionally considered wild.

      --
      Qxe4
    6. Re:Yeah, but by thrawn_aj · · Score: 0

      The first noble truth of Buddhism, sometimes translated: "Life is filled with a deep sense of unsatisfaction."

      I do wish religious groups would stop projecting their own failings on all of humanity (even though I admit that's a common psychological defense mechanism). I am quite satisfied with my life thankyouverymuch. I'm not entirely happy but that's a small price to pay for satisfaction and I imagine there's lots of people like that in the world.

    7. Re:Yeah, but by thrawn_aj · · Score: 1

      Then most people either want to be peasant farmers or mafia bosses?

      And if there's overlap - free fertilizer! Woot!

    8. Re:Yeah, but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I am a mafia boss you insensitive clod.

    9. Re:Yeah, but by thrawn_aj · · Score: 1

      +1
      I had occasion to watch cable the other day at my parents' place. Felt like I'd left a quiet poolroom and entered a Chuck'e'Cheese (however that's spelled). Gawd, all those LOUD and stupid ads. Even with mute, it's like they're clawing at the inside of my brain o.O

    10. Re:Yeah, but by phantomfive · · Score: 2, Informative

      In this case it's more likely a problem with your own understanding of the statement than it is with the original statement. You should attempt to understand before you throw out wild criticisms of one of the world's oldest philosophies; it has survived for a reason.

      You are right though, in the modern consumerist society, satisfaction is easily found at the touch of a button or injection of a drug.

      --
      Qxe4
    11. Re:Yeah, but by spun · · Score: 1

      Unsatisfaction? Never heard it translated that way, I thought it was 'suffering.' Which means more than just sickness, old age, and death. Every good thing contains suffering, if only in that you will miss it when you don't have it. In fact, 'pain' is not even really suffering. Suffering is when we create ideas in our heads that make us unhappy, punishing ourselves for our failures, replaying painful events, fearing the loss of pleasurable things, and generally making assumptions and then having feelings about those assumptions as if they were real.

      Scientists have done world wide satisfaction polls. Turns out, most people are happy and satisfied with life. Also, only three factors make any sort of a difference, statistically speaking, in whether or not you are satisfied with life. First, do you have enough money to meet your basic needs? Having more won't make you any happier on average, but having less will make you unhappy. Second, do you have a tight knit and supportive community? Being lonely makes you unhappy. Third, do you have a tight knit and supportive religion? I don't know what makes this any different from factor two, really, but that's what the science-talking-guys say.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    12. Re:Yeah, but by thrawn_aj · · Score: 1

      Of course. No one can ever be satisfied. If they are, it must be because they are easily satisfied. Self-fulfilling cliches - the hallmark of religions down the ages. Moving goalposts and all that rot. *Yawn* Eastern mysticism is even more obscurantist than western religion.

      Also, to be perfectly clear, I was criticizing an attitude behind a profoundly meaningless statement. If that statement does not capture the essence of the attitude, then it is merely a lazy label for something else entirely and my criticism ends with it (and doesn't extend to the religion). Your choice.

    13. Re:Yeah, but by phantomfive · · Score: 1
      Here is the full quote, which I found in fortune. I typed it out in a GIF and set it as my desktop background for many months until I understood it:

      Indeed, the first noble truth of Buddhism, usually translated as `all life is suffering,' is more accurately rendered `life is filled with a sense of pervasive unsatisfactoriness.' -- M.D. Epstein

      I can't read Sanskrit, but I think it is as accurate as any other translation. A Buddhist story used to teach the first noble truth: a man chasing happiness in life is like a man who was being chased by an elephant, climbs a tree to escape, but finds there is a beehive in the tree and gets stung, then the elephant shakes the tree and the man falls down into a well, where he is saved from hitting the bottom (which is full of hissing cobras) only by hanging on some vines of the tree, and of course the bees are mad from the shaking and only sting him more; at this moment, with the elephant raging above, he notices some drops of honey dripping from the bees nest and tries to derive some satisfaction by sticking his tongue out to catch the honey. In the modern world you can see this with people who are miserable chasing things that obviously will not make them happy, and yet they continue to chase.

      I think unsatisfactoriness has a better meaning because in the modern world, we don't suffer too much; we generally don't go hungry, even homeless people have decent lives by historical standards, etc. And yet even with all the modern comforts of life, without any real suffering, it can still be unsatisfactory.

      Third, do you have a tight knit and supportive religion? I don't know what makes this any different from factor two, really, but that's what the science-talking-guys say.

      I utterly believe this, if you've ever watched someone whose life is changed by religion it is astonishing how much difference it can make (and I don't mean people who went to a televangelist rally and now want you to 'be saved'). Literally astounding. I don't claim to understand how it happens, but I think part of it might be the change from looking inward to looking outward; the change from being self-centered to suddenly caring about people around you. I think the reason it helps to have a supportive and tight-knit religion is because (aside from the community) is because they help keep you on the path: following a religion by yourself is hard and not many people are so self-motivated.

      --
      Qxe4
    14. Re:Yeah, but by causality · · Score: 1

      The first noble truth of Buddhism, sometimes translated: "Life is filled with a deep sense of unsatisfaction."

      I do wish religious groups would stop projecting their own failings on all of humanity (even though I admit that's a common psychological defense mechanism). I am quite satisfied with my life thankyouverymuch. I'm not entirely happy but that's a small price to pay for satisfaction and I imagine there's lots of people like that in the world.

      If you are happy it's because you have found a way to live that overcomes the suffering and dissatisfaction that one often experiences in life. I've never heard of a Buddhist who argues that happiness is not possible or that suffering can never be overcome. In fact they put a great deal of effort into understanding suffering for the purpose of transcending it.

      I don't believe this qualifies as projecting failures onto all of humanity. That sounds like a categorical judgment of an entire belief system based on a one-liner appearing in Slashdot. If you want to evaluate Buddhism, your best resource are the Buddhists themselves and their actual teachings.

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
    15. Re:Yeah, but by causality · · Score: 1

      You are right though, in the modern consumerist society, satisfaction is easily found at the touch of a button or injection of a drug.

      That's a lie. If it weren't a lie, then the rates of things like depression, alcoholism, and suicide would steadily decrease as we become more and more of a consumerist society. What is actually happening is exactly the reverse. What can be found at the touch of a button is not satisfaction but mere indulgence. Indulgence is a way of denying that there is a problem, that you're really OK just the way you are, that there's nothing wrong with the way you look at life, that you're not missing something basic and fundamental in all the hustle and bustle and reaching after external things to complete yourself, and that you can feel good without really improving your character and your understanding and your status as a human being. It's a lie.

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
    16. Re:Yeah, but by phantomfive · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Of course. No one can ever be satisfied. If they are, it must be because they are easily satisfied. Self-fulfilling cliches - the hallmark of religions down the ages. Moving goalposts and all that rot.

      lol I'm sorry you didn't catch the irony of the statement, "satisfaction can be found with a drug injection" for surely a drug injection (such as heroin) is in no way satisfying: as soon as the rush is over, you need to find more to keep yourself up. How can it be called satisfaction if it is only temporary? As for consumerism, if you need to rush to the next shiny object to get your fix of happiness, that is not satisfaction. Satisfaction and happiness can only be found from inside, not from external objects and pleasures. Buddhism as a religion can help you reach this, but as even the Dalai Lama says, it is not the only way (although he feels it is certainly the best way).

      *Yawn* Eastern mysticism is even more obscurantist than western religion.

      Indeed. One time, a great king was traveling, and came across a wheelwright, and wondered how he was able to make such excellent wheels. The wheelwright said, "I can only tell you the dregs of my knowledge." The king, who was a forceful but not very forgiving chap, demanded he explain himself or forfeit his life. He said, "I can tell you the basic outline of how to make a wheel, but that is the least of my knowledge. The greatest of my knowledge comes from years of working with the wood, gaining a feel of how pieces fit together, knowing when things are just right. This cannot be taught in words, thus any words I say will only be the dregs of what I know."

      In western culture, we have gone more of a dictionary approach, where we try to explain everything in words, which is nice when it works but there are some things that can't be expressed in words. I cannot tell you the exact muscles that must contract when you play the piano, but I can hear when you are doing it wrong when you play, and I can give you exercises to fix it.

      --
      Qxe4
    17. Re:Yeah, but by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Indeed: the irony of the statement should be obvious when you realize that no drug injection is satisfying, it only makes you come back more and more, in a cycle of unsatisfaction, in a trap that makes you want something that you never needed before.

      --
      Qxe4
    18. Re:Yeah, but by spun · · Score: 1

      Okay, I get that translation now. Meh. I always looked at the four noble truths as something Buddha came up with to do the most good for the most people while doing the least harm for most people. He was very good at meeting people where they are at. But sometimes that means simplifying things.

      So the first noble truth is really 'more than likely, they way you are leading your life now, you are creating unnecessary suffering in yourself and others.' Not quite as catchy. But of course, the fourth noble truth states there is a path out of suffering, which is where this translation falls over for me. because in this translation, truth four says, "there is a path to satisfaction." But chasing satisfaction is chasing happiness, and this won't work. Specifically, chasing enlightenment is the second surest way not to get there, right after not chasing it. There's a reason Buddhism is called the middle path.

      I think you've hit the nail on the head with your analysis of why religion matters.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    19. Re:Yeah, but by mattack2 · · Score: 1

      How can it be called satisfaction if it is only temporary?

      I'm hungry. I eat some food. I'm not hungry anymore.

      Oh my god, I'm going to be hungry again.. does that mean I was never "not hungry"?

      Logic fail on your part.

    20. Re:Yeah, but by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Please don't tell me you are really this dumb. I will cry.

      --
      Qxe4
    21. Re:Yeah, but by Smauler · · Score: 1

      Life is so much more exciting when you are doing things. Even if it is just planting a seed and watching it grow.

      Don't judge one until you've tried it. Planting a seed and watching it grow is about as exciting as painting a fence and watching it dry for some people. I get by on a full and active productive life interspersed with big fun drug and alcohol binges - the two lives are not mutually exclusive. When the latter begins to have a major effect on the former, you might have a problem.

    22. Re:Yeah, but by Smauler · · Score: 1

      surely a drug injection (such as heroin) is in no way satisfying: as soon as the rush is over, you need to find more to keep yourself up.

      You don't understand drugs. You can be very satisfied from a weekend in which you used drugs, and have no desire to use them currently. The perpetual myth is that once you pop you can't stop - it's just not true. Most people who end up properly addicted have serious problems beforehand. There are an estimated 1 million cocaine users in the UK... these are not the down and outs - cocaine is expensive, these are generally people with decent jobs.

      That being said, I'd never touch heroin - downers just don't do it for me.

    23. Re:Yeah, but by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      I really don't care what you do, but your description isn't very convincing. You say, "I get by" as if it's hard or something. It's good that you've found balance and everything, but 'being productive' isn't really enough. You need to reach for the internal drive, the passion, something that motivates you beyond just 'getting by' or sex. If your 'normal' life is such that you don't prefer it over drug and alcohol binges, then you are missing out. Maybe you don't feel that way, and it just seems so because your comment was hastily written. Like I said, I don't really care, and you obviously are doing much better than Ms. Lohan, but you might want to be aware that there is something you're missing out on, and it could be better.

      --
      Qxe4
    24. Re:Yeah, but by Smauler · · Score: 1

      A drug can be fun once.... you don't need to keep coming back for more. They are not traps unless you allow them to become traps.

    25. Re:Yeah, but by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Indeed there's a reason a specifically pointed out heroin. The withdrawal is killer.

      My point though, was: happiness doesn't come from a drug. If you need it, you have problems.

      --
      Qxe4
    26. Re:Yeah, but by Smauler · · Score: 1

      I think part of it might be the change from looking inward to looking outward; the change from being self-centered to suddenly caring about people around you.

      This is part of what gets some atheists so irate. You should have been doing this in the first place - religion or no. If it takes religion for someone to start caring for people around them, there's something wrong with that person.

      I'm an atheist, though not a fanatic. I don't mind people believing in other things though I do perhaps think somewhat less of those that do. I believe in wonder, beauty, humanity, awe and hope, and these things are far from purely religious. YMMV

    27. Re:Yeah, but by thrawn_aj · · Score: 1

      lol I'm sorry you didn't catch the irony of the statement, "satisfaction can be found with a drug injection" for surely a drug injection (such as heroin) is in no way satisfying: as soon as the rush is over, you need to find more to keep yourself up. How can it be called satisfaction if it is only temporary? As for consumerism, if you need to rush to the next shiny object to get your fix of happiness, that is not satisfaction. Satisfaction and happiness can only be found from inside, not from external objects and pleasures. Buddhism as a religion can help you reach this, but as even the Dalai Lama says, it is not the only way (although he feels it is certainly the best way).

      I certainly don't disagree with any of that (well, except to point out that that's not irony but that's a minor point). It's just that I would add religion to your list of "quick happiness fixes". Also, I resent the fact that a statement to the effect that someone is satisfied automatically means (to you) that it must be either drugs or consumerism. Profundity and intellectual/inner satisfaction is not the sole province of the religionist/spiritualist. Indeed, in this day and age, that is the last place I would go to look for it. The search for meaning has surpassed these methods for quite some time now.

      I'm glad the Dalai Lama agrees that his is not the only way. Perhaps there is something to his much vaunted wisdom after all. Again though, eastern philosophies and cultures (and I come from one) tend to focus too much on questions and not enough on the effort needed to at least try to answer them. Nothing irritates a dabbler in eastern mysticism (that last word used in its technical sense, not the popular one) more than a profound question that is finally answered - hence the 'obscurantist' accusation.

    28. Re:Yeah, but by thrawn_aj · · Score: 1

      Actually, that's not a bad point at all and in fact, has a lot in common with spiritual/intellectual satisfaction. A permanent state of satisfaction is about as pretty as a vegetative state. A permanently satisfied mind is a stagnant mind, just as a permanently sated appetite is a symptom of death. I have to force myself to be dissatisfied so that I can have some ambition (and this dissatisfaction can be intellectual, economic or about pretty much anything).

    29. Re:Yeah, but by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Nothing irritates a dabbler in eastern mysticism (that last word used in its technical sense, not the popular one) more than a profound question that is finally answered - hence the 'obscurantist' accusation.

      Nah. Those who truly follow eastern mysticism love nothing more than reaching enlightenment in a topic. The question is nothing but a guide pointing the way.

      --
      Qxe4
    30. Re:Yeah, but by thrawn_aj · · Score: 1

      The first noble truth of Buddhism, sometimes translated: "Life is filled with a deep sense of unsatisfaction."

      I do wish religious groups would stop projecting their own failings on all of humanity (even though I admit that's a common psychological defense mechanism). I am quite satisfied with my life thankyouverymuch. I'm not entirely happy but that's a small price to pay for satisfaction and I imagine there's lots of people like that in the world.

      If you are happy it's because you have found a way to live that overcomes the suffering and dissatisfaction that one often experiences in life.

      See emph.

      That sounds like a categorical judgment of an entire belief system based on a one-liner appearing in Slashdot.

      To be honest, it was more of a judgment about the one-liner. If what you said about Buddhism is true, I'll gladly take back the larger judgment and humbly apologize. Buddhism (provisionally) aside though, it is a deep-seated feature of religious groups that they attribute their own failures to some fundamental failing of humanity by the simple act of spouting grand one-liners such as the one I was replying to ("I am unhappy" => "There is unhappiness in the world" => makes it seem like it might not be my fault). It's intellectually and factually dishonest and it irritates me enough to respond to it even when that leads me off topic (such as now).

    31. Re:Yeah, but by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Incidentally, where would you go to find intellectual/inner satisfaction?

      --
      Qxe4
    32. Re:Yeah, but by thrawn_aj · · Score: 1

      Well then, if I could only meet more true followers*, I guess I would be truly satisfied eh? (Have we just come full circle? Woot =)

      ________
      *because the ones that I have met so far are the basis for what I wrote. Poseurs, the lot of the them (if what you say is the norm rather than the exception).

    33. Re:Yeah, but by thrawn_aj · · Score: 1

      Why would I need to go anywhere? =) I have the basic ingredients I need already in my head. Input from the outside world, a steadily growing store of tools to play with it and the ability to learn from the experiences of others. That's the first assumption I threw away a long time ago - that you need to embrace a certain method to find satisfaction. Who knows? Perhaps a feedback approach (feeling your way to it through trial and error) rather than a mapped out approach is more suitable eh? To explicitly answer your question though, 'nowhere'; because it's all right here, just waiting to be found. Also, intellectual satisfaction is something that I hope is always temporary because there is literally no end to intellectual inquiry. I wouldn't want to be intellectually satisfied, ever! Spiritual satisfaction, I've always equated to making your peace with the universe (in a vague way). I made a truce and I find that to be sufficient =).

      By the way, I've never had a real time conversation on /. before. Heady =)

    34. Re:Yeah, but by stuckinphp · · Score: 1

      , but you might want to be aware that there is something you're missing out on, and it could be better.

      Without him stating what drugs, we really can't start to assume real life could be the 'better' choice..

      --
      if only
    35. Re:Yeah, but by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      I have never made a survey of Buddhists to see how many are true followers and how many are poseurs, so I can't really comment on that, but certainly Buddha was searching for enlightenment. If you want to look for true followers, go ahead, but I would suggest instead look for enlightenment.

      --
      Qxe4
    36. Re:Yeah, but by FiloEleven · · Score: 1

      I'm in the same boat. Yet I wonder, without all those suckers still subscribing to cable, would my internet utopia be viable? The collapse of traditional news media and the simultaneous decline in quality makes me wonder. Of course the news has been going downhill for a while, but it often takes a lot of cash to produce the TV shows worth watching, and nobody's found a way to raise that amount of money exclusively from online media.

    37. Re:Yeah, but by FiloEleven · · Score: 1

      it is a deep-seated feature of religious groups that they attribute their own failures to some fundamental failing of humanity

      Yeah, but everybody does that. ;)

    38. Re:Yeah, but by FiloEleven · · Score: 1

      If it takes religion for someone to start caring for people around them, there's something wrong with that person.

      For many people a religious group is the first place where they experience a community with such an outward focus. You were probably lucky enough to get the community aspect without the baggage that religion can bring with it. It's important to recognize the primacy of experience, and if your experience up until finding a good church (synagogue, mosque, temple) was every-man-for-himself-ishness, it's only sensible for you to have acted as those around you did--it was all you knew--and only sensible to tie the religion with the newfound outward focus. That doesn't excuse the vindictive convert-or-burn types because they're obviously not practicing an outward focus. I also don't mean to imply that every religious group is caring for those about them; I've seen more than one that has failed utterly in that aspect both within and without the congregation.

      One interesting thing that I have heard quite often from atheist friends of mine is that (Protestant, in all their cases, hired for weddings) pastors are more likely to take you as you are and not try to force their views on you than most people in general. I felt the same way but I grew up Protestant and had generally assumed it was because they took it for granted that I shared their views.

      Myself, I was able to dump the religious baggage, I think because when I had enough experience I was able to see how the good actions produced results while most of the beliefs didn't, and because I have an inquisitive nature. I tend to think less of those who have an uninformed faith in any belief system, and I include scientism and atheism in that. You can usually tell within five minutes of conversation whether or not someone has examined their beliefs, and I generally respect those who have even if they're different from my own.

    39. Re:Yeah, but by thrawn_aj · · Score: 1

      *sigh* Indeed. In my more charitable moods, I like think of it as "a grammatical misunderstanding of the proper scope of the first person plural". (And I just understood the full implications of your statement. Bravo good sir! =D)

    40. Re:Yeah, but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Indeed there's a reason a specifically pointed out heroin. The withdrawal is killer.

      Severe alcohol withdrawal is more dangerous (as in, it will kill you) than heroin withdrawal. Heroin withdrawal is simply more unpleasant.

      My point though, was: happiness doesn't come from a drug. If you need it, you have problems.

      There is a difference between needing something and enjoying it. If you enjoy something, you are happy to have that ability to do so. However, if you need it to be happy, you are addicted to it. This applies to anything that people find pleasant, not just to the physically addictive substances that people normally associate with addiction.

    41. Re:Yeah, but by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      So the first noble truth is really 'more than likely, they way you are leading your life now, you are creating unnecessary suffering in yourself and others.' Not quite as catchy. But of course, the fourth noble truth states there is a path out of suffering, which is where this translation falls over for me. because in this translation, truth four says, "there is a path to satisfaction." But chasing satisfaction is chasing happiness, and this won't work. Specifically, chasing enlightenment is the second surest way not to get there, right after not chasing it. There's a reason Buddhism is called the middle path.

      lol, I think that is an excellently confusing analysis, enough to match Buddhism itself. It should be mentioned though that Buddha himself spent a whole lot of time and effort chasing enlightenment before he found it.

      I think you've hit the nail on the head with your analysis of why religion matters.

      I don't know, I feel like there is something more, but I need to run more experiments to be sure. Unless you are a preacher or something it is hard to find good before/after test subjects for joining religions and watching how they change, so I am running into this problem.

      --
      Qxe4
    42. Re:Yeah, but by spun · · Score: 1

      He did, but he realized that the effort of 'chasing' enlightenment lead to a hierarchy of those who had 'achieved' certain mental states. He rejected the idea that it took a special kind of person, or special effort, to achieve a non-dualistic mental state.

      Yes, finding proper controls for religious experiments can be tough. "Okay, now you. Stop believing in God. How do you feel?"

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    43. Re:Yeah, but by Smauler · · Score: 1

      If your 'normal' life is such that you don't prefer it over drug and alcohol binges, then you are missing out.

      In my post I explicitly said "the two lives are not mutually exclusive". I'm separating here for simplicity - obviously there's overlap... however, I don't do drugs and use alcohol because my "normal" life is crap. I do drugs and use alcohol because it's a lot of fun every once in a while. It's not exclusively an escape (though it can be used that way), it is a great experience in itself. Blanket statements about uses of substances are wrong, and just about all commonly made statements about loads of substances are demonstrably wrong too.

      Just because I value experiences given to me by certain substances does not mean that I do not value the other experiences that those without the drug induced experiences have too.

  6. Sense of entitlement much? by brian0918 · · Score: 2, Informative

    For something that's free, people sure do get enraged when it changes in the slightest, or has bugs, or decides to try to profit from the information that people love to dump on it.

    1. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by Conspiracy_Of_Doves · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or publicizes information that you specifically told them to keep private.

    2. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Users would revolt if Google was found selling and publishing Gmail contact lists to the world. I can have an expectation of maintaining a private list of contacts in email, why is it so fucking tough and/or mocked to have such a desire on FB? Demanding bounds on the data even though it's willingly put in the cloud is not unreasonable.

    3. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by Len · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Facebook has repeatedly changed their policies to publish various data that they had said was private or friends-only. But hey, no problem, they didn't charge money when they screwed people over so it's OK!

      Uh, no, it's not OK.

    4. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by Darkness404 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So you don't think that users would get mad if the information FB said would be private suddenly became public? What if on a forum the e-mail address you had hidden suddenly became public and they sold that to spammers? Its essentially the same thing with Facebook.

      As for the changes, the vast majority of them were regressions simply change for the sake of changing. Yes, there -were- some great new features, namely the chat feature added in, but the "New Facebook"? It "fixed" bugs that didn't exist and added in whole hosts of other ones.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    5. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by causality · · Score: 4, Insightful

      For something that's free, people sure do get enraged when it changes in the slightest, or has bugs, or decides to try to profit from the information that people love to dump on it.

      It's an equal exchange. Facebook as a corporation would go out of business in a hurry if not for its users. The users are doing their part. Facebook is failing to do theirs in a way that satisfies the very users who make its existence possible. It's perfectly legitimate to raise an objection about this.

      You're essentially saying "shut up and take what you're given" as though Facebook were a charity. They absolutely are not, and it's intellectually dishonest to speak about them as though they were.

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
    6. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by selven · · Score: 2

      It's not free, nothing is. People still have to spend time creating and customizing their accounts. In their minds, this constitutes and investment just like any other, and they feel betrayed when the terms of the investment suddenly change.

    7. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by Fnkmaster · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually, the problem is that like the cable industry, *Facebook* acts like it has a sense of entitlement. Once they had a critical mass and growth rate, they decided they could shit all over their users and the users wouldn't defect, leaving plenty of eyeballs to advertise to and freeing them to engage in short-term profit-maximizing behavior.

      Sadly, many of these dissatisfied users keep using Facebook even though they know it sucks and they hate it.

    8. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by interkin3tic · · Score: 1

      For something that's free, people sure do get enraged when it changes in the slightest, or has bugs, or decides to try to profit from the information that people love to dump on it.

      Well, if you promise one thing for free, then go changing it on people, yeah, that annoys them at least a little. They were expecting one thing and had their reasons for agreeing to it in the first place. Those expectations may have been ignorant, but you don't sign up for facebook -after- investigating their privacy policy, that's just not how normal people work.

    9. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by oldhack · · Score: 1

      Really, why don't they ask for their money back? Whiny bastards.

      Hey Slashdot! Fix your stupid website!

      --
      Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
    10. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by BJ_Covert_Action · · Score: 1

      I suppose that's true to an extent, but frankly, there is a limit to how you can apply that logic. For me, I used to love using Myspace and I hated facebook (years ago). Myspace was lighter, simpler, and had more interesting bits to it. Since they were both free, I opted for Myspace and stuck with it. Then Myspace changed their UI, did some stuff that I still don't understand to their messaging system, and all around broke their website on my older hardware computers (yes, I intend to upgrade soon, but I shouldn't have to do so for a damned website). So, I became dissatisfied with a free service because the free service simply stopped working. If a website goes from loading promptly and successfully every time, to crashing my browser every time, then it is no longer working. So sure, Myspace was giving me something for free, a broken website.

      So, I switched to Facebook. It wasn't the best in the world but it worked well enough and, as you said it was free. Well, some of their more recent changes significantly hinder my browsing experience. Their IM client spawns in random portions of my screen. It autologs me out every once in awhile, even when I am active. I lose more posts to /dev/null than I do on Slashdot. All in all, over the past 4 months, Facebook's changes have been slowly breaking the website. Eventually, I figure it will break entirely just like Myspace did. So again, is it free? Yes. Does it work? Not so much anymore.

      So, in the end, yes, you get a free service. But if the service is so buggy it's broken then users will stop using it and rank it as a piece of crap. The same thing happens in the free software world. If a piece of software becomes so buggy it is too hard to get it to work efficiently, most people will just describe it as poor in quality and stop using it. If someone walked up to someone else on the street, and said, "Do you want this free iPod?" most people would say yes if there wasn't a catch involved. Then, if they took that free iPod, and turned it on, and it didn't play any music, they'd still call it garbage. Is that entitlement or just common sense? If someone offers to provide you something, even if it is free, there is a minimum level functionality to be expected. When this functionality does not exist, then the person receiving the service will say, "This is crap and I can't trust you to offer me free stuff anymore." That's not really entitlement, its just frustration at the dubious nature of some snake oil salesman.

      So the moral of the story? Is Facebook free? Yes. Does that mean the users should not expect any functionality whatsoever? Not necessarily. But you can call the entitlement if you want.

    11. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by stewbacca · · Score: 0

      Or publicizes information that you specifically told them to keep private.

      ...that you willingly gave to them, knowing it is virtually impossible and totally unrealistic to assume it will remain private.

    12. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Is it virtually impossible and totally unrealistic to assume that Google will keep my Gmail contact list private?

    13. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by oldhack · · Score: 1

      No, he's saying you're perfectly free to move along if you don't like it. Who the hell forces you to use facespace?

      --
      Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
    14. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by thrawn_aj · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Demanding bounds on the data is not unreasonable. Expecting those demands to be acquiesced to without a single slip is ... unrealistic. Expecting privacy to be actually enforced out of the kindness of their hearts is a bit unreasonable. Having faith that all that private data will NEVER (even by accident) fall into the wrong hands once its out there is remarkably naive. Shit happens. Whatever happened to reasonable personal precautions about privacy on the internet (no physical addresses or phone numbers)?. Hell, if nothing else, Lamebook is rife with examples of how one weak link in your friendslist can humiliate the fark out of you by exposing private data. FB is a social disaster waiting to happen for so many indiscreet people that I'm amazed how well things have gone so far.

    15. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by AxemRed · · Score: 1

      I have yet to run into a case where Facebook blatantly publicized information that I set to be private. Most of the time, people fail to understand the permissions or how to set them. Other than the occasional bug, I haven't seen much of a reason to complain.

    16. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by SirWhoopass · · Score: 4, Insightful

      knowing it is virtually impossible and totally unrealistic to assume it will remain private

      Why?

      I fully understand the risks of putting anything online, in particular at a social networking site. Most of us here do. We are not typical of the average person using technology or the internet. Beyond simply protecting grandma and teenagers from their themselves, I still ask why it must be unrealistic to assume FB (or any social networking site) to keep their promises.

      I don't have a comprehensive change log of FB's EULA or interface, but the bottom line is they keep changing it at whim. Companies want a EULA to have the strength of a full contract, but it works both ways. They can't just alter the terms and expect it to stick

      As an example, credit card companies like to change terms often. The notice they send, however, clearly states that a card holder may opt out and stick with the current terms. Their card will remain valid until the expiration date under the current contract terms. Facebook does not do this. I might have placed a photo with privacy settings such that only my family members can see it. They later make a sweeping change to open that photo to third-party apps or the public at large. This is the real problem with Facebook.

      If they made that change with a notice that let you opt-out, or delete all previous data that was set to be private, people would probably have a much better opinion of them. Of course, that also might make people aware of how much they're really putting out there, and Facebook would rather they didn't think about it.

    17. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by thrawn_aj · · Score: 1

      What's curious is the anger is so impotent (and I say this without any snark). I heard a news piece on Canadian radio ("Search engine" by Jesse Brown) lately that talked about this. Apparently, with all the ruckus and "Quit FB" groups making noise, less than 0.01% of FB users actually quit over this. By the way, if you're Canadian, there's a class action lawsuit in the works representing all Canuck FBers (google it).

      It's like expecting cocaine users to quit snorting because their dealer ratted them out to the Feds =)

      When a FB user's entire social life is wrapped up in FB, he/she is at the mercy of the FB overlords. Only a loss in features would cause a substantial loss in users at this point. Otherwise, it's always gonna be business as usual. The users have no leverage over FB, it's entirely the other way around - why would you expect anything to change?

    18. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by thrawn_aj · · Score: 1

      It's perfectly legitimate to raise an objection about this.

      But that objection would carry weight only if there was some substantial threat behind it (the threat of large numbers of FB users quitting for instance). Even with massive mobilization, less than 0.01% of users did so after this latest debacle. That sends a clear message to FB that there are no consequences to privacy violations. Clearly, the users need it much more than the other way around. The users have no leverage by themselves (rather like politics in a large democracy). Note that they do have it in principle, but they shown that they are unwilling to use it in practice, which is why I say they don't have it (in effect).

    19. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      ...that you willingly gave to them, knowing it is virtually impossible and totally unrealistic to assume it will remain private.

      That's nice, but in lots of other places you have a universal right to privacy, even if you post something like that because it's considered a business transaction. Which means they have to get your explicit permission, and in most places outside the US, EULA's aren't binding.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    20. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by thrawn_aj · · Score: 1

      Once they had a critical mass and growth rate, they decided they could shit all over their users and the users wouldn't defect, leaving plenty of eyeballs to advertise to and freeing them to engage in short-term profit-maximizing behavior.

      Seems to have been an amazingly accurate prediction on their part. Dicks yes, but highly intelligent dicks =)

    21. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by drooling-dog · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure I'm understanding your point. Because no one is "forcing" me to use a service, it is therefore somehow unethical or unreasonable to voice an opinion on it?

      If no one is allowed to criticize the practices of a company unless they are being held captive, how will others be able to make the informed choice of whether to leave or stay?

    22. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by causality · · Score: 1

      No, he's saying you're perfectly free to move along if you don't like it. Who the hell forces you to use facespace?

      Actually the above is why I don't personally use it, but we were not talking about me personally until you attempted to make that the focus of this conversation. I can easily show why that's silly and useless and probably an attempt to distract.

      The fact that I don't personally use it does not make it alright for Facebook to poorly treat those who do use it. It's really that simple. I never claimed that anyone is forced to use Facebook. Nothing I have said depends on anyone being forced to use Facebook. Can you quote me as having said that? No? So what point did you think you were making, exactly? Did you imagine that some trivial statement of the obvious is a staggering objection that destroys every point I have made?

      There is no excuse for a corporation making promises it refuses to keep. Saying that something will be private and then publishing that information is simply dishonest. The fact that I don't personally use Facebook doesn't make this ok. What kind of ethics/morality do you have there? "It didn't happen to me, therefore there is nothing wrong with it?" Would you like to abandon this reasoning of yours, or will you contend with me by defending it? If you choose not to respond I will assume you wish to abandon this faulty reasoning.

      If you read my other posts in this discussion, I do indeed think there is something wrong with people who really don't like a service but continue to use it anyway. I think their vanity gets the best of their judgment which is why they tolerate it. That part is the users' responsibility. I also think there is something wrong with a corporation that is dishonest with its users, breaks promises, and treats them poorly as evidenced by low satisfaction rates. That part is the corporation's responsibility. These are not mutually exclusive.

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
    23. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by stewbacca · · Score: 1

      I still ask why it must be unrealistic to assume FB (or any social networking site) to keep their promises.

      The same reason it was unrealistic for me to think the VA would keep social security number private?

      It's not the promise-breaking I'm worried about, it's the fact that no information that is online is secure, regardless of the promise.

    24. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by stewbacca · · Score: 1

      I never said anything about EULAs. I merely state that if information is online, only a fool thinks it is safe.

      You can put stuff on facebook and hope it doesn't get misused because they have good privacy in place, or you can NOT put stuff on facebook, which will never be compromised.

      I choose to put stuff on facebook, because they do a 'good enough' job for my privacy tolerance levels. People who bitch about it are free to not use it.

    25. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If Linus could really add that functionality to Linux, Apple's marketshare would fall through the floor instantly.

    26. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by rainmouse · · Score: 1

      There's a difference between trying to profit and exploiting peoples naivety to mine and sell personal information. Nothing in life is free, especially not facebook. Its already reached the stage where undisclosed changes in privacy settings have left many job interviewers with photographic detail of peoples private lives. Of course people hate them but its too late for that, especially among teenagers when all their friends use it, there is no choice for them if they want to maintain a social presence.

    27. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by Aphoxema · · Score: 1

      For something that's free, people sure do get enraged when it changes in the slightest, or has bugs, or decides to try to profit from the information that people love to dump on it.

      Just it becomes free doesn't mean you can't grow dependent on it. When your peers feel just as stuck as you do, it makes it even harder to seek out an alternative.

      Really though, I wonder if it has such poor ratings because it's free.

      --
      "Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
    28. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      Except in most cases, the right to consent is buried within the EULA. Which is illegal, so it's akin to what you're implying. However when you're in a country which has a universal right to privacy, you can't consent that way. So regardless of what's put on FB, in various countries you have the right to keep that information 100% private by default.

      In their world you don't. So you end up at odds with non-binding EULA's and founding documents of a country, or a charter of rights and freedoms, declaration of citizens rights, etc. I can tell you that EULA's and companies that use them as an attempt to bypass a citizens rights are at the bottom rung in law.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    29. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by Aphoxema · · Score: 1

      Is it virtually impossible and totally unrealistic to assume that Google will keep my Gmail contact list private?

      Yes.

      --
      "Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
    30. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by causality · · Score: 1

      It's not the promise-breaking I'm worried about, it's the fact that no information that is online is secure, regardless of the promise.

      Of course perfect security is impossible. Having said that... if not for the promise-breaking, it would be reasonably secure.

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
    31. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by nine-times · · Score: 1

      Well that's what Facebook gets for setting itself up to be a vital Internet service that people should rely on for social networking, photo-sharing, etc. Nobody forced them to do it, and I don't hear them complaining about being in that position.

      It's worth noting that YouTube and Wikipedia are also free, but have high customer satisfaction. It's not *simply* that people are being whiners.

    32. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by causality · · Score: 1

      I never said anything about EULAs. I merely state that if information is online, only a fool thinks it is safe.

      You can put stuff on facebook and hope it doesn't get misused because they have good privacy in place, or you can NOT put stuff on facebook, which will never be compromised.

      I choose to put stuff on facebook, because they do a 'good enough' job for my privacy tolerance levels. People who bitch about it are free to not use it.

      The EULA or "terms of use" are what allows them to change their privacy policies, even concerning data submitted under previous agreements, at any time they want. They contain clauses specifically allowing this, which is a CYA measure so that users have no real recourse when they get stung by such a practice.

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
    33. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by sqrt(2) · · Score: 1

      Since I don't see ads (no one I know does) the only issues are privacy concerns which can be fixed by setting everything to friends only and not accepting requests from people you don't personally know. I guess at a basic level I have to trust that FB won't share anything I put on there with anyone, but I don't have anything on Facebook that isn't already public knowledge.

      --
      If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
    34. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by mmcxii · · Score: 1

      You're essentially saying "They owe users something" as though Facebook were a charity. They absolutely are not, and it's intellectually dishonest to speak about them as though they were.

      They're a business. Don't like it? Don't consume their product.

      Why is this such a hard concept for these people? There are alternatives. There are options. Facebook isn't a necessity. You are not entitled to anything from Facebook.

    35. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by causality · · Score: 1

      Those expectations may have been ignorant, but you don't sign up for facebook -after- investigating their privacy policy, that's just not how normal people work.

      Then those "normal people" experience needless and preventable suffering anytime they get outraged about a privacy policy that they could have investigated before jumping on board. I therefore do not see them as victims.

      Note, that still does not excuse Facebook's conduct. I'd rather live in a world where companies universally fear behaving this way because they know it will lead to widespread boycotts capable of putting them out of business. But you're never going to get that as long as "grab your ankles" is the average user's way of dealing with things.

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
    36. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For something that's free, people sure do get enraged when it changes in the slightest, or has bugs, or decides to try to profit from the information that people love to dump on it.

      Can't argue with the "decides to try to profit from the information that people love to dump on it" part, but the fact that it's "free" doesn't change the fact that it's a service being provided (for a profit, no less). Is it really too much to ask that services being provided not suck in every conceivable way?

    37. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As an example, credit card companies like to change terms often. The notice they send, however, clearly states that a card holder may opt out and stick with the current terms. Their card will remain valid until the expiration date under the current contract terms.

      Extremely rare.

      Credit cards usually allow you to "opt out" by closing the account and paying off the EXISTING balance on the current terms. You cannot continue to use the card--doing so makes you subject to the new terms.

    38. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by zuperduperman · · Score: 1

      it's the fact that no information that is online is secure

      I really don't get where this pervasive meme is coming from. I just encrypted and posted a 200MB backup file of my personal documents to an online service for safekeeping. Only I have the PGP decryption key. Can you tell me how it is not secure?

    39. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by stewbacca · · Score: 1

      Well, for starters, I worked for the NSA in the past, so you go ahead and keep thinking your encrypted data is secure.

    40. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by ukyoCE · · Score: 1

      Do you ever talk on your cell phone? You wouldn't be upset if your cell provider released all your phone calls publicly online, would you? How about if Gmail made all your e-mails public? You willingly gave them all that information, why would you expect them to keep it private?

    41. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by stuckinphp · · Score: 1

      It is relatively secure until you bring time into the equation.

      --
      if only
    42. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by zuperduperman · · Score: 1

      Ok, touche, but let's face it, if the NSA take a particular interest in my data then I am pretty well screwed even if I never put it onto the internet (hello keyloggers, spyware, or just plain old cops bashing down the door and taking my computer).

      On the other hand if they are casting a wide net to search for interesting people then I think my encrypted data is pretty safe even from them - even they do not have computing resources to do this stuff in real time (or do you have a revelation to give us that the NSA have a back door into Gnu PGP?)

    43. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by sinclair44 · · Score: 1

      I don't recall any instances of anything private retroactively becoming public -- when did this happen?

      --
      Omnes stulti sunt.
    44. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      About six months to a year ago when they decided to make friend lists and fanpages public with no option to restrict access.
      It wouldn't surprise me if this act put more than a few people in danger of physical harm given the number of LGBT groups and similar organizations who use this as their main means of communicating with members.

    45. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by sinclair44 · · Score: 1

      Fan pages were always public IIRC. There was a transition to force listed activities and interests to be fan pages, but that required clicking through a transition tool that very, very clearly stated they would become public. I honestly don't see the big deal with friend lists, but that one was quickly fixed. As of a couple of months ago, fan pages don't have to be public anymore either.

      --
      Omnes stulti sunt.
    46. Re:Sense of entitlement much? by stewbacca · · Score: 1

      lol, you didn't work for them

      Yes, absolutely NONE of the 800,000+ people in the United States with Top Secret clearances are on slashdot. And of those none, none of them ever worked at or for the NSA. You sure got a good laugh out of my post, didn't ya?

  7. API lousy, too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    And, as a developer, I can say that their API is buggy and very poorly documented, by far the worst of any of the social networking or photo sharing sites I've worked with. My daughter reports that available iPhone/iPad apps are terrible, too.

    1. Re:API lousy, too by stewbacca · · Score: 1

      Worse than Myspace? If so, that's an interesting, developer-centric attitude. I can't find one person over the age of 14 who thinks Myspace is a better user experience than Facebook.

    2. Re:API lousy, too by Stormie · · Score: 1

      Amen to that. A couple of the most miserable experiences of my career have been when clients demanded Facebook apps, that API is an absolute horror.

    3. Re:API lousy, too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Huh? I've developed on the Facebook and Twitter API's for the past 2 years. A year ago Facebook was pretty confusing, but to their credit they have a LOT of data to provide access to. Their API is complex because of all the the information they have. I think the opengraph API is a LOT better though. And the new open source Javascript API is incredibly simplified. How many times has the Facebook API gone down lately?

      Twitter on the other hand...some times I wonder if they even know what they're doing at all. They have a fraction of the features and users that Facebook has and they can't seem to go a day without API issues.

      Out of curiosity can you list some other social networking and photo sites that are easier to use? TBH I've never used Facebook's photos API...I have heard that part is pretty complex and confusing.

  8. I'm surprised Twitter wasn't included. by gcnaddict · · Score: 1

    Twitter was not included because many of its members access the site through third-party sites rather than Twitter.com.

    They're still subject to many hours of downtime per year. I'd still like to see what users think of the fail whale and other representations of Twitter's persistent capacity issues.

    --
    Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
    1. Re:I'm surprised Twitter wasn't included. by Nadaka · · Score: 5, Funny

      Hey!

      Twitter has 5 8's reliability.

      That is only 1 less than the 5 9's that people keep raving about!

    2. Re:I'm surprised Twitter wasn't included. by natehoy · · Score: 1

      Damnit, stop posting truly good stuff just after I run out of mod points!

      I may have to steal that line very soon.

      --
      "This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
    3. Re:I'm surprised Twitter wasn't included. by men0s · · Score: 1

      Hey!

      Twitter has 5 8's reliability.

      You mean that every five days it has 8 hours of availability? =)

  9. User satisfaction is irrelevant by NormalVisual · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Whether the users are happy or not doesn't mean squat to Facebook because their users aren't their customers. It's the happiness of their advertisers and those who purchase the data that Facebook continually mines that matters to them.

    --
    Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
    1. Re:User satisfaction is irrelevant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When I'm feeling bored, I log onto facebook and click the x on the adds on the right side, indicating I found the ad "offensive", they never seem to get the hint.

    2. Re:User satisfaction is irrelevant by quanticle · · Score: 1

      Agreed. Users aren't the customers. They're the product.

      --
      We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
    3. Re:User satisfaction is irrelevant by Conspiracy_Of_Doves · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The users are the product that they are selling.

    4. Re:User satisfaction is irrelevant by cacba · · Score: 1

      Youtube loses money, yet it sold years ago. Existing income isnt the only consideration.

    5. Re:User satisfaction is irrelevant by gnarlyhotep · · Score: 1

      User satisfaction is important, and that's what could end up busting Facebook at the bank. The users are their commodity. If they are unsatisfied and stop using the service (which they will when the next big-splash social site opens), Facebook finds itself with less and less value to offer their customers. Not concerning yourself with the users is a great model for a turn-and-burn, but not for sustaining a business. Zuckerberg comes off short sighted enough that he either doesn't get it, or doesn't care because he can cash out with a big sale before the critical event.

    6. Re:User satisfaction is irrelevant by mycologistica · · Score: 1

      But the happiness of advertisers and those purchasing FB data depends on the extent to which FB users are on FB, which depends on whether FB users are satisfied with the service they are receiving. So, I would argue, it does come down to user satisfaction.

    7. Re:User satisfaction is irrelevant by batquux · · Score: 1

      "64 out of 100"

      Facebook for President!

    8. Re:User satisfaction is irrelevant by causality · · Score: 1

      If they are unsatisfied and stop using the service (which they will when the next big-splash social site opens), Facebook finds itself with less and less value to offer their customers.

      If those users had any backbone then they'd do without a non-critical service before they'd use one that they don't like. And no, a vanity page is not a critical service that one could never live without. Because they have no such backbone, Facebook can collect revenue even when it does a terrible job.

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
    9. Re:User satisfaction is irrelevant by interkin3tic · · Score: 1

      Whether the users are happy or not doesn't mean squat to Facebook because their users aren't their customers.

      Until their users are so unhappy that they leave and their real customers immediately follow. Look at radio stations. They're in hard times because everyone is listening to their mp3s or internet radio, or something that doesn't have annoying DJs and ads. The fact that you don't pay radio as a customer is irrelevant.

    10. Re:User satisfaction is irrelevant by thrawn_aj · · Score: 1

      Reality doesn't seem to support you in this. The social inertia of an entire network of friends is a massive thing. And these trends are more complicated by the fact that these are true networks - with horrendous connectivity (not like the social circles of yore that used to be dominated by a handful of people that largely controlled trends). Besides, if such a large scale fiasco couldn't push users away, I'm curious to see what will. The users are addicted, they're invested too heavily and at a personal level in this particular site. It would take massive failures in terms of loss of features to drive people away.

      Also, think of the older users who don't like to migrate to new technologies. Added inertia. All in all, Zuckerberg's quite safe and he knows it.

    11. Re:User satisfaction is irrelevant by vlueboy · · Score: 1

      "64 out of 100"
      Facebook for President!

      C'mon, guys ... Slashdot must top that with someone who'll actually do something useful.
      Let us nominate our highest-karma overlord: Anonymous Coward for President!

    12. Re:User satisfaction is irrelevant by John+Hasler · · Score: 1

      But, since the users are still there, they must be satisfied despite what they say when surveyed.

      --
      Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
    13. Re:User satisfaction is irrelevant by Lord+Bitman · · Score: 1

      Sometimes you only want to buy something as a honeypot for legal battles you think you can win?

      --
      -- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
  10. You misunderstans - users aren't their customers by jfoobaz · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Facebook's customers are people who pay for the advertising, and who get extensive ability to target ads to specific people based on demographic and other kinds of data that Facebook gets by mining users profiles and inter-connections. And I'd imagine that these customers are just fine with the seemingly constant changes in privacy rules and settings.

  11. So is facebook losing users? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is facebook just the least abysmal compared to all the other competitors and non-competitors.

    I've never used it, so I don't get all the fuss, but how bad can it be when so many people are using it.

    Don't like it. Start your own site.

    1. Re:So is facebook losing users? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't like it. Start your own site.

      Wow. I didn't realize it was so simple.

    2. Re:So is facebook losing users? by natehoy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Is facebook just the least abysmal compared to all the other competitors and non-competitors.

      Bingo. Ding-ding-ding! Give the man a cookie, he's hit the nail on the head.

      Facebook sucks the least of any site offering the service they offer. That's the key to their success.

      Don't like it. Start your own site.

      Oh, no! And you were on a roll! Well, we have some lovely consolation prizes. Thanks so much for playing. :)

      Not really a practical answer. In order to have a social site, you have to have the opportunity to socialize. Facebook was the earliest contender to have a site that didn't blow big stinky steaming monkey chunks, and therefore most of the social site fans are already there and pretty entrenched.

      To unseat Facebook, you're going to have to build something so fantastic, so compelling, so supremely awesome that people are going to want to move en masse. That way, your new users have a chance at having at least a little bit of a friend network when they arrive.

      And since most of Facebook's money comes from targeted advertising, any serious contender is either going to have the same privacy issues and ruin most of the incentive to leave Facebook, charge a membership fee and alienate users that way, or run the site out of the goodness of their hearts to the tune of millions of dollars of losses a year.

      The same was said of AOL - they were the first to make a compelling case for that newfangled Internet thingy to the masses, and they were the BIG player back when the Internet was young, and a connection was on the other side of a dialup modem. Facebook is the same "training wheels to social sites" that AOL was the "training wheels to the Internet" back then.

      AOL was eventually unseated, and Facebook will be, too. But probably not in the next couple of years. There's little profitable incentive to unseat them and do so in such a way that people would actually want to leave Facebook.

      --
      "This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
    3. Re:So is facebook losing users? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most people on Facebook also have accounts on LinkedIn, Skype, AIM, Gchat, probably Steam, Battle.net. Social networks are a dime a dozen.

  12. Right, It's the Most Popular Website in the USA by eldavojohn · · Score: 4, Informative

    And yet EVERYONE uses it anyway. They must like something about it. I think it's great. Of course I don't run ANY apps and I use Adblock.

    Right, the same report says:

    However, according to July 2010 Hitwise data, Facebook is the number one website in the country, with 9% of all website visits (Google has 7.4% and Yahoo! 3.8%) and 55% of all social media visits. Facebook’s market dominance in the U.S. and around the world is indisputable. How can it be so popular if people dislike it so much?

    They go on to point out Facebook's monopoly and its popularity being more with younger people while older people complain about it the most. There's little loyalty but it acts as a storehouse for existing videos and pictures well. Then I think this is the most telling piece of this paradox:

    Customers are willing to suffer through a poor experience in return for the benefits Facebook provides. This is a rare scenario in the American economy: usually customer satisfaction is intertwined with market success. The few exceptions to this rule (airlines, cable companies, and fast food) are operating in a sphere where there are no true standouts, so the bar is low. Should MySpace stage a comeback, or should any other competitor to Facebook deliver a truly superior customer experience, Facebook should have cause for concern. Right now, only Wikipedia and YouTube surpass Facebook in terms of customer satisfaction, and they are not in direct competition.

    Interesting stuff to consider for social sites. If Facebook users are so unhappy, could you build a better Facebook that grabs their images and videos off of Facebook and moves their friend network for them? I don't think Facebook would stand for it long but it's interesting to consider.

    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:Right, It's the Most Popular Website in the USA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      You can be sure a sizable portion of that FB traffic is crap games like Mafia wars and Farmville. The things all the stay-at-home moms play all day every day with their 2000 "friends". Soon to be owned by Google *shudders*.

    2. Re:Right, It's the Most Popular Website in the USA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Interesting stuff to consider for social sites. If Facebook users are so unhappy, could you build a better Facebook that grabs their images and videos off of Facebook and moves their friend network for them?

      Although most here have no interest in gay male social/dating sites, it would be interesting to see satisfaction ratings and an analysis of the shifts in where users have gone between gay.com and adam4adam.com.

      Gay.com was around first, but tortured users with pop-up ads and having to navigate through hell to get to what they wanted. When they got there instead of having paid-member features greyed out with a footnote explaining enhanced access, one would find many choices there to click on that look valid, but just bring up more nagging ad/signup screens. Adam4adam is free and fully usable with some non-essential but useful enhancements enabled for contributors. No being tortured with free access limited to fingernail-sized pictures in viewing profiles, ads are minimally invasive etc.

      It's amazing and a bit sad when a site which constantly annoys its users is quite popular. It is refreshing to see success of a newer site with a more thought out (dare I say Apple-like?) approach (clearly cares about and put much thought into the user experience - listens to feedback, pays attention to even small details, constantly works to make things that already work work better). Do the people that run annoying sites (or tv networks) think they don't have to care, or are they just clueless???

    3. Re:Right, It's the Most Popular Website in the USA by AmberBlackCat · · Score: 2, Interesting

      MySpace had low user satisfaction but high popularity. That's how Facebook took over. Now Facebook is MySpace and they have low user satisfaction but high popularity. They just don't know how vulnerable they will be when the next Facebook pops up.

    4. Re:Right, It's the Most Popular Website in the USA by Peach+Rings · · Score: 1

      The definition of a good social networking site is: Whatever the most of your friends are using. If a strong competitor emerged, since nobody is using it yet nobody will use it.

      Also, I don't know why Wikipedia should have such a good user satisfaction. I hate the new look and have to log in everywhere to restore sanity.

    5. Re:Right, It's the Most Popular Website in the USA by binary+paladin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The difference between then and now is 3rd party integration.

      My phone has a Facebook app. My photo album automatically uploads to Facebook. The list goes on.

      Facebook is not MySpace and the market surrounding it is not the same as it was a few years ago.

  13. Predictability by causality · · Score: 1
    The difference is that some of us were paying attention when Facebook first started catching on. How many negative stories does one require before they realize that this is a company which is not interested in its users?

    Controversies over privacy issues, frequent changes to user interfaces, and increasing commercialization have positioned the big social networking sites at satisfaction levels well below other Web sites...

    I'd add an item to that list: users who can't see the seeds of those things and must wait for the 50-foot tree to grow before they can identify it. This is despite repeated examples of other corporations that don't care about their users and customers, more than sufficient to learn what the pattern looks like and how to recognize it in advance. I don't believe the users are so stupid that they're incapable of realizing this. I believe that the "oooh shiny" effect of another trendy bandwagon and the indulgence of their vanity is more important to them than a quality experience, and thus overrides any reasoning they may have performed. So, this is just water finding its own level.

    For those who are perceptive, the fact that user satisfaction is so low but those same users continue to use the service tells you anything you might want to know.

    --
    It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
    1. Re:Predictability by natehoy · · Score: 1

      For those who are perceptive, the fact that user satisfaction is so low but those same users continue to use the service tells you anything you might want to know.

      Yes, it actually says several things. Your contempt for the site and its users is quite obvious, and understandable enough. However, setting that aside - regardless of people's reasons for wanting to use a social site, there are a number of logical reasons why someone who wants to use one would choose Facebook despite its obvious shortcomings.

      First and foremost, if you want to use a social site (leaving aside why), they are rather like Immortals, "in the end, there can be only one." People will only really want to use the social site where, well, there's a chance to socialize. That's rather the point. That means choosing the site where all the people they know are already members. And very few people are going to want to support more than one, possibly two if you're really into it, social sites at the same time.

      Second, social sites provide a medium of communication that isn't really closely analogous to anything that has existed before. Yeah, it's "part" this and it's "like" that, but it's not really a new medium. It's a new type of communications medium. And, for some, a really compelling one. And Facebook's take on it is markedly different from, say, MySpace's attempt. Facebook mixed the right elements and ease-of-use at the right time. They weren't first, they weren't perfect, but they did it just well enough to attract critical mass - they attracted massive amounts of users just as the whole social site fad reached the mainstream.

      People continue to use Facebook, warts and all, because it has no real competition in its niche. There are other social sites, for sure, but Facebook got it closer to "right" than anyone else earlier than anyone else managed to get something as useful, so they ended up with most of the users.

      And there's obviously something to its niche that people feel is useful to them, or it wouldn't account for more traffic in the US than any other web site. I don't see the concept of socialization over the Internet going away any time soon, and Facebook sure provides a great way to maintain an online community.

      Eventually, they will probably be unseated, but it's going to take a lot of effort for someone to knock Favebook off the throne it currently occupies. The new site is going to have to be compelling enough to get people to exit Facebook pretty much en masse and convince most of their friends to come along. Facebook's parent company makes a LOT of money through advertising, and they are a bit of a juggernaut at the moment, so there aren't many sites that would dare face off with them.

      And anyone with the resources to become a serious contender is going to be in it to make money, so it's doubtful that the privacy issues will go away, so even privacy-minded folk will have little reason to move.

      --
      "This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
    2. Re:Predictability by causality · · Score: 1

      Yes, it actually says several things. Your contempt for the site and its users is quite obvious, and understandable enough.

      I have no contempt for them or other form of spite towards them. I don't care to waste my energy and reduce my quality of life by getting irritated at a thing just because I can see what's wrong with it. That would amount to allowing externals to control how I feel and that would be unacceptable. Like Richard S. Bach once said, "if your happiness depends on what other people do, then I guess you do have a problem."

      I am merely saying that a business which fails to satisfy its users does not deserve to remain in business. That's all.

      Anything else you state falls under what I really meant by "for those who are perceptive ....". Obviously there are reasons they continue to use a site with which they are dissatisfied. Those reasons are not difficult to discern.

      I personally have no need for social networking sites, as I view communicating with people I care about as something too important for me to entrust to the likes of Facebook or MySpace. Even so, that's my personal needs. In general non-personal terms, I am not even arguing against the existence of the social networking site as a concept. I am arguing against the way they have thus far been implemented. There is simply no excuse for shoddy quality, nor for playing word games with ToS and such to justify publishing data when an agreement existed that it would remain private.

      I also see what is wrong with a company about which one can say "if they enjoy revenue, it's not because they are good and offer compelling reasons to use their services, it's only because everyone else is so much worse." That just lowers the bar for everyone. It exists because so many people put up with it. If the users decided that they would do without social networking before they'd put up with this arrangement, it would not be the end of all social networking sites. It would reform them for the better because going out of business would be their other option.

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
    3. Re:Predictability by John+Hasler · · Score: 1

      Obviously there are reasons they continue to use a site with which they are dissatisfied.

      Obviously there are reasons they continue to use a site with which they say they are dissatisfied.

      --
      Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
    4. Re:Predictability by causality · · Score: 1

      Obviously there are reasons they continue to use a site with which they are dissatisfied.

      Obviously there are reasons they continue to use a site with which they say they are dissatisfied.

      If one is going to say they are lying about that, the burden of proof will be on the person making that claim.

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
  14. A small reminder by countertrolling · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You get what you pay for

    --
    For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
    1. Re:A small reminder by kindbud · · Score: 1

      Facebook's users are what's being sold here, let's not kid ourselves.

      --
      Edith Keeler Must Die
    2. Re:A small reminder by mcgrew · · Score: 1

      You get what you pay for

      Oh boy! Have I got the perfect bridge for you! *twirls mustache*

    3. Re:A small reminder by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yea. For example, on Wikipedia you don't even pay with your privacy and by the site selling cycles of your attention to advertisers and their score is... er. really good actually.

      Somehow I don't think it has anything to do with what you pay. Wikipedia is created for _your_ benefit. Facebook is run for the benefit of large corporations and _it shows_.

    4. Re:A small reminder by afabbro · · Score: 1

      You get what you pay for

      Unless you're a Slashdot subscriber. Then you get the same thing others get for free.

      --
      Advice: on VPS providers
    5. Re:A small reminder by countertrolling · · Score: 1

      Not true. Read the FAQ, old timer :-)

      --
      For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
  15. Joey by Itninja · · Score: 1

    "Man, this is bad! And I've had my share of bad reviews. I still remember my first good one though. 'Everything else in this production of Our Town was simply terrible. Joey Tribbiani was abysmal.'"

    --
    I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
  16. If it's not a quote, it should be. by Caerdwyn · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "Customer satisfaction is a thing of the past. They should get over it."

    --
    Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
  17. well firts thoughts... by eexaa · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It took around 10 seconds to shoot down standard army targetting dummy.

    If the laser tower can target the pilot in classical manned aircraft (and I bet it can), it's done in less than a second, even from quite far away.

    In result, aircraft with any tranlucent windows seem totally unusuable for combat now.

    1. Re:well firts thoughts... by eexaa · · Score: 1, Funny

      oh holy god. I posted it to wrong discussion. please ignore me. :D

    2. Re:well firts thoughts... by selven · · Score: 5, Funny

      Is this some kind of Farmville mod? Cause that might make that game actually interesting.

    3. Re:well firts thoughts... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Laser targeting Facebook: I think he may be onto something.

    4. Re:well firts thoughts... by umghhh · · Score: 1

      I think this is one of the few interesting posts in this thread indeed! Give'm more mod points folks!!!!

    5. Re:well firts thoughts... by natehoy · · Score: 1

      Yes, they are adding shark-mounted lasers. It's a combination of Mafia Wars and Farmville. You can take out a lasershark hit on someone's lost lamb.

      --
      "This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
    6. Re:well firts thoughts... by H0p313ss · · Score: 2, Funny

      Facebook + lasers... what could possibly go wrong?

      --
      XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
    7. Re:well firts thoughts... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The cockpit is normally on top of the plane, the laser (being ship-based) will certainly be targeting the plane from underneath, that will make it a little hard to target the pilot directly. And I thought this laser was primarily intended to take out missiles.

    8. Re:well firts thoughts... by one+cup+of+coffee · · Score: 1

      What's crazy is you got modded +4interesting.
      I guess it is a good point.

  18. Re:You misunderstans - users aren't their customer by natehoy · · Score: 1

    Right. The users are the product.

    I'm sure their customers are quite happy with them.

    --
    "This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
  19. not sure i understand by chichilalescu · · Score: 1

    user satisfaction for a free product? don't get me wrong, i personally don't like the idea of facebook.
    but face the facts: their purpose is to have many users, and they're getting more and more users.
    do these people with the survey provide any kind of insight into how their result means "people will leave facebook"?
    by default, such a website can't possibly be "liked", because it needs to satisfy your granma and your cousin with the PhD who's doing research into AI. nobody can really like it, they're just using it because they can't find anything better.
    and I think any facebook replacement will most likely be very facebook-like in everything except possibly the privacy stuff, because they'll be doing the same thing.

    --
    new sig
    1. Re:not sure i understand by vlm · · Score: 1

      by default, such a website can't possibly be "liked", because it needs to satisfy your granma and your cousin with the PhD who's doing research into AI. nobody can really like it, they're just using it because they can't find anything better

      In other words, "The internet is for pr0n"

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    2. Re:not sure i understand by Culture20 · · Score: 1

      user satisfaction for a free product? don't get me wrong, i personally don't like the idea of facebook. but face the facts: their purpose is to have many users, and they're getting more and more users.

      I love the people I'm connected with via the site. I hate the site. It's like a smelly dive you're willing to go to for the sake of your friends because they always meet there. FB, although a "free" product should worry about being too smelly; if enough users leave, the people paying for corporate voyeurism will throw their money at $FOO instead.

  20. SP Reference by MrTripps · · Score: 1

    People are just ticked because they had to friend Kip Drordy. http://www.facebook.com/KipDrordy

    --
    "I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
  21. And like the cable companies... by spagthorpe · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Facebook is basically a monopoly in this space. No matter what the satisfaction rating, people will continue to use it, sometimes all freaking day. I would love to have a business "failing" this badly.

    --

    WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
    (Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)

    1. Re:And like the cable companies... by Darkness404 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There is a -huge- difference between Facebook and cable companies. Facebook is not an abusive monopoly like cable companies are. In general, cable companies use public land for private gain, many times going even far enough to forbid competition in a town so the town gains a cheaper rate for crappy service.

      If everyone wanted to, they could move from Facebook to another social networking site very easily. Saying that Facebook is a monopoly is akin to saying Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and Gmail are monopolies, they are popular, but there isn't really much stopping me from going to a different email provider.

      And people -have- moved social networking sites many, many, many times in the past. One only needs to look at Friendster and Myspace to see that. What Facebook has done that will make it hard to de-throne is that -everyone- has a Facebook, they have made it easy for not only teenagers to have an account but also middle aged people and the elderly, something that Friendster and Myspace failed to do.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    2. Re:And like the cable companies... by Linker3000 · · Score: 1

      Back in the days when I taught customer service skills, one of the course modules was on benchmarking customer satisfaction and one of the points we went out of our way to emphasise was the difference between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty and how it was important to understand that each had a sweet spot which varied according to the type of business and the degree of competition in the market sector.

      In crude terms:

      1) You could be crap at providing your 'service' if the customers had no choice to use you because there was no alternative (although one big mistake that many organisations make is thinking they have a captive audience when customers have a 'do nothing' option), which equates to low satisfaction, high loyalty

      or

      2) You could spend a fortune bending over backwards to make the customer experience as fantastic as possible, but your customer base may still not be loyal - for example: if you have a choice of shops on the way home and need to buy some bread, you will generally choose the one that's most convenient even though all the local supermarkets are (probably) neat, clean and inviting. In this case, most customers would rate their local supermarkets as clean and friendly (high satisfaction), but would still opt to use the one that was most convenient when shopping 'on the fly' (low loyalty).

      Facebook may earn low-ish satisfaction points, but they have high loyalty because once a user has established a base there, they are unlikely to move elsewhere (although they can of course, just stop using the service - the 'do nothing' customer option above), so Facebook has to determine what return (or improved return) they would get from investing on improving the service, and they might just consider the ROI to not be worth it.

      --
      AT&ROFLMAO
    3. Re:And like the cable companies... by Jeppe+Salvesen · · Score: 1

      I was surprised by these numbers. Anyhow, they are positive in the sense that Facebook is indeed vulnerable to competition. As you state, the tricky part of any competitor is to gain enough momentum to get Joe Average to try it out. I guess if Diaspora or something along those lines has sufficient quality and capacity upon launch, and they get positive press, enough people might be swayed to try it out that they gain critical mass. We'll see. Giants fall.

      --

      Stop the brainwash

  22. It's "Free" by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 1

    I suspect that in general, consumers are willing to give up a lot in terms of quality for products which are 'free.' (Yeah, yeah, I know it's not 'really' free, users see ads, sell their privacy blah blah blah, but Joe Average user would consider FB 'free.')

    If FB were to charge for their services it would be a different story. For example, I pay $25 per year for a flickr account. As a result, I have a much lower tolerance for quality issues with flickr than I do with facebook. Luckily, flickr issues are few and far between.

  23. It was cool when I could use it to find everyone by bennomatic · · Score: 1

    But then I found everyone, and it's just a bunch of freaking noise. I use the system to allow extended family (and some friends) to see pictures of my kid. Beyond that, I've got no time for the bazillions of status updates from Zynga. I mean, why is my "news feed" full of notices about so-and-so hatching a unicorn egg or some BS?

    It turns out that as cool as getting connected is, actually being connected kind of sucks.

    --
    The CB App. What's your 20?
  24. Facebook users agree: Facebook sucks. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Because hey, 500,000,000 users can't be wrong!

  25. I am sorely disappointed by Locke2005 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've been a FaceBook member for over a year now, and I haven't gotten laid even once!

    --
    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
    1. Re:I am sorely disappointed by DavidD_CA · · Score: 1

      You've mistaken Facebook for MySpace.

      --
      -David
    2. Re:I am sorely disappointed by nschubach · · Score: 1

      You should probably do what I did and upgrade your account:

      https://ssl.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account

      (Just don't mind that delete_account part... They meant to type upgrade) ;)

      --
      Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
    3. Re:I am sorely disappointed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Classic blunder - you didn't want FaceBook, you wanted AssBook.

  26. Tangential rant: text when data is better by JustinOpinion · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is a tangential rant, but I hate the way both of those links present the data. For some reason most journalists and even bloggers feel the need to "digest" data by putting it into paragraph prose, as if this makes it easier to understand. In many cases, it doesn't. TFA and the linked blog end up spending many, many sentences listing a bunch of numbers, which turns into a confusing narrative. What would be far more useful is a table or list of sites, along with their scores, put in order. They can highlight the entries they think are particularly interesting (e.g. Facebook), while allowing the reader to peruse the list and gain an immediate appreciation for the trends. They can then spend their sentences describing the context and meaning of the data, rather than just repeating numbers.

    I see this time and again in news reports: they list statistics and numbers that they are clearly reading off of a list or graph, but don't let us actually see the graph! I appreciate that I may be more technically-minded than most, and may be more comfortable with graphs and ordered datasets than the average news reader. However I think anyone smart/educated enough to understand the point being made in a paragraph of statistics is better served by a simple and clean (but accurate) graph or ordered list.

    1. Re:Tangential rant: text when data is better by JustinOpinion · · Score: 3, Informative

      In order to address my concern, here is a list of all the scores that TFA and the blog post mention:

      82 FoxNews.com (news)
      80 Google (search)
      77 Wikipedia
      77 USAToday.com (news)
      77 Microsoft Bing (search)
      76 NYTimes.com (news)
      76 Yahoo (search)
      75 ABCNews.com (news)
      75 MSN
      74 MSNBC.com (news)
      74 AOL
      73 CNN.com (news)
      73 Ask.com (search)
      73 YouTube
      66 Airlines
      66 Subscription TV service
      64 Facebook
      63 MySpace

    2. Re:Tangential rant: text when data is better by Midnight's+Shadow · · Score: 1

      Well to answer your question it is because tables and graphs are scary to those who aren't trained in their use. Kind of like equations. This isn't just a problem with journalists and blogs. I've seen it in academic papers where the data could be easily expressed with a table or a graph or even an equation, instead they waste a lot of space spewing the numbers out. Yes this is in scientific journals with biologists being the worst in my experience.

      --
      "God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. " -Voltaire
    3. Re:Tangential rant: text when data is better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's probably a legacy issue. When journalists were trained to work for print (as in -ing press) companies it was likely more cost effective to use text than anything else. And since the writer probably didn't know what the layout of the page containing their artical would be when they write they couldn't just fake it with spacing. As such they would use text to convey even information more efficiently included in a table.

      Now, since young journalists are trained by older journalists, and the public is used to reading the sort of articals that journalists write, we're stuck with a situation where no one (public or journalists) realises that that method is outdated.

    4. Re:Tangential rant: text when data is better by men0s · · Score: 1

      Posting the straight up data is fine, but as Edward Tufte will tell you, there are many ways to display it in a manner that will hide any sort of insight. A good idea would be to have a relatively simple chart or table, and perhaps a couple paragraphs proposing ideas as to why certain industries or websites received lower scores than others. In short, make your data interesting, not the actual graph.

    5. Re:Tangential rant: text when data is better by one+cup+of+coffee · · Score: 1

      Thanks, that was very informative.
      I had no idea that AOL or Ask.com were still around.

  27. I want to "Like" this article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why can't Slashdot get with it and have a "Like" button on stories and people's comments... this whole moderation thing hurts my brain. I just want "Like"
    And to those people who want a "Dislike" button, then your a terrorist.

    1. Re:I want to "Like" this article by somaTh · · Score: 1

      Right, who would ever want to know WHY you like an article?

      --
      Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
  28. Re:It was cool when I could use it to find everyon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It turns out that as cool as getting connected is, actually being connected kind of sucks.

    After getting 'reconnected' I realized why I had let those connections lapse in the first place...

  29. Re:It was cool when I could use it to find everyon by ducomputergeek · · Score: 1

    What was cool about Facebook is I've been able to find all the folks I studied abroad with in Germany back in 2000 even though there were people from the US, UK, Ireland, Iceland, Finland, Turkey, etc.. It was kind of fun to see everyone ten years later and see what folks were up to and keep some type of tabs of people. It also helps because now if I need to get a work permit for the UK, that's what one of my friends from that program does now for living. That part of Facebook I enjoy. Also I like how it keeps track of peoples birthdays. Or at least how it used to as I'm too busy to keep track of that stuff. It used to be I could look at the lower right hand corner and see people with up coming birthdays not only for that day, but for 2 or 3 days in advanced. Which was handy because I could then send someone flowers or plan for a phone call to wish them a happy birthday.

    Then suddenly in the last month (who knows maybe longer) that information was gone, moved and only shows birthdays for that day. I don't check Facebook every day and I've missed some peoples birthdays this year I'm sure. But that is the biggest problem with facebook, the interface changes too often. I don't know if you can customize the layout or not. I don't care enough. But I everytime they make a big change like that, I find myself logging in less and less.

    --
    "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
  30. User Satisfaction is a horrible Metric. by stewbacca · · Score: 3, Insightful

    People are stupid. Their opinions are stupid and lousy indicators of a product's quality. YouTube users are more satisfied? Have you seen the user comments on YouTube? Have you ever been able to find something you need on YouTube hidden amongst the millions of complete time-waster outlets for any idiot with a camera?

    People who like their stuff like their stuff, regardless of how good or bad it really is. Saying Facebook has bad user satisfaction is a byproduct of populist group-think: "I heard something about Facebook giving out my private information (that I willingly host on the Internet)...damn those bastards! But I'm not giving up my Facebook because it's too important to me!".

    Seriously, if it so abysmal, stop using it. Not enough people have that sort of character, though. It's too easy to bitch about things without actually doing anything about it.

    1. Re:User Satisfaction is a horrible Metric. by bennomatic · · Score: 1

      have you ever been able to find something...?

      Yes. Two words: Ninja Cat.

      --
      The CB App. What's your 20?
    2. Re:User Satisfaction is a horrible Metric. by GreggBz · · Score: 1

      Facebook used to be cool before they started screwing it up. I don't think it's users are stupid. I think they are wising up.

      It has everyone, because.. well it has everyone. And once it got everyone, it started to change for the worse. The changes are what people are complaining about.

      If there was an alternative with better privacy regulations and less crap, I think lots of people would jump ship. The problem is, most of the value of Facebook comes from the size of it's user base. In order for the alternative to be appealing, my friends have to have it.

      Seasoned users are getting sick of Facebook, and the growth rate will eventually peak and decline if it has not already. It's going to take a while, but I think these days mark the beginning of the end for the Mark and the gang. Wait till the movie comes out.

    3. Re:User Satisfaction is a horrible Metric. by stewbacca · · Score: 1

      Facebook used to be cool before they started screwing it up. I don't think it's users are stupid.

      I do. The beauty of Facebook is it let's me know just how stupid my racist uncle really is, or how ignorant my young coworker is of the world, or just how insanely right wing nut job some of my friends really are.

      Then there's this gem:

      http://www.failbook.com/

      (at work, it's blocked, so i can't remember if it's .org or .com)

      I like the guy who was crowing about how he got lucky only for his mom to press the "like" button.

    4. Re:User Satisfaction is a horrible Metric. by DragonWriter · · Score: 1

      Seriously, if it so abysmal, stop using it.

      Something can be "abysmal" in terms of user experience and still be better than the existing alternatives in a space, and better than not consuming any product in the space, from a user perspective.

      OTOH, if it is abysmal in terms of user experience, given something that seems to offer a viable alternative, people are likely to jump ship rapidly. It wasn't that long ago that MySpace was the social network at the center of all the attention. If Facebook can't keep its users happy, its time in the sun may be limited, too.

    5. Re:User Satisfaction is a horrible Metric. by subsonic · · Score: 1

      You know, you are incredibly cynical, but incredibly right. And, secondly, if you use something like Facebook 'stupidly' then you will have a poor user experience. Waste your time with friends who only play farmville? then Farmville will seem annoying to you (plus, you missed the "ignore" function, so you're double stupid). Click on every random link? then chances are your profile got "hacked" so it spams messages to all your friends. Its a good test of your real life, in a way.

    6. Re:User Satisfaction is a horrible Metric. by stewbacca · · Score: 1

      I'm normally not cynical. When it comes to straight numbers, though, most people are stupid (at least here in the US). There are more anti-intellectuals than there are intellectuals. Even if you are in the middle, there's a constant societal push for you to become anti-intellectual--especially in the current political environment. Hopefully this will be cyclical and I can get back to being my normal, not-so-cynical self soon.

  31. Did they ask the question the right way? by blair1q · · Score: 1

    I mean, a subtle change in wording of a question that means, "Do you like facebook?" and all you're finding out is that a lot of people don't like their friends or their own lives.

  32. Better Option by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I deal with the cable company because the only alternative is to drive to starbucks every time I want to use the internet.

    I deal with the airlines because the only alternative is to drive 12 hours to get to my destination.

    So apparently, 500 million people deal with facebook because the only alternative is to pick up a phone, and actually call their friends.

  33. Re:Satisfaction Is 'Abysmal' by larry+bagina · · Score: 2, Funny
    Don't you remember that microsoft kin (wonder what their satisfaction is) ad about the creepy stalker girl that tries to hook up with someone only to find out he's twice as old as she thought?

    The point isn't that people post less than accurate pictures (though they do), the point is that crazy stalkers will track you down for a "surprise hookup". Fortunately, you can make the slashdot idle section if you update your facebook status to "is being raped by a crazy stalker".

    --
    Do you even lift?

    These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

  34. Well by ceraphis · · Score: 1

    How could you be satisfied when you, the average facebook user, instead of spending your day trying to do something constructive or interesting, you decide what food you'd like to eat that you could post about that people would click "like this". Eh, who needs food, my crops are dying.

  35. AdBlock Plus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Facebook has ads?!

  36. And slashdot ranks ... by damn_registrars · · Score: 1
    ... not on the list. I guess it may be for the better that slashdot is no longer large - or influential - enough to be considered for the list at all. This way, slashdot management (and programmers) can continue in their blissful ignorance of the destruction they cause.

    Although one would think that the complaints of

    frequent changes to user interfaces, and increasing commercialization

    Should ring some bells around here... or maybe not.

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
  37. Why not ORKUT?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    as far as keeping in touch, user groups, sharing material (photos, articles, videos), more intuitive user interface, much better privacy, etc., ORKUT is way ahead.

    Oh, but it lacks the silly games, 'coolness factor' and overall self-important style.

  38. Apples to Oranges? by rm999 · · Score: 1

    Why even compare an airline with a social networking site with a video sharing site? How do you even quantify that? When an airline crams me into a small seat for 400 dollars I'm dissatisfied, which is to say I'm always dissatisfied with airlines. When a video sharing site doesn't load a video I become dissatisfied, which almost never happens.

    It's like saying hammers are better than cars because more people are satisfied that their hammers do a better job.

  39. If you are not happy with FB... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Don't fucking use the garbage, and then be done with the matter.

    I have been unhappy with it since it came to be but nobody wants to hear me bitch about it.

  40. I would be surprised if it wasn't by alien9 · · Score: 1

    facebook invented so many problems no one had before.

  41. Missing the point: WE are not customers to FB by MadCow42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Customer Satisfaction" for Facebook is measured in click-throughs and sales dollars... not in user complaints.

    You and I are not customers to Facebook. We're the product. We're what they're selling - our eyeballs are being sold to the advertisers. Their only reason to make you happy is to ensure you come back (begrudgingly or not).

    Once you realize that, their lack of "customer service" isn't surprising in the least. So long as you're not paying for the service, you're not a customer. They care very little about your privacy, your experience, the impact that their constant site layout changes and privacy policies have on you, the annoyance if/when they sell your personal data to mailing lists and spammers - so long as it all suits the needs of their true customers and doesn't piss you off enough that you don't keep coming back. This is the way of business... get used to it unless you want to pay for these things.

    MadCow.

    --
    I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
  42. I like facebook. by SirRedTooth · · Score: 1

    For uploading and keeping pictures and videos. And occasionally getting in touch with lost friends.

  43. Users != customers by fiannaFailMan · · Score: 1

    The only customers that matter are the ones who advertise on the site. Everyone else is a viewer. As long as they go on viewing and clicking on ads, their opinions about a free service won't count for much. It's like griping about commercial broadcast TV. It's free to the consumer, all that counts is that the advertisers get their message out there because they are the true "customers" from a strict business point of view. The only thing that will make a significant change to the way these providers do business is anything that adversely affects their ability to get clicks or views on ads. Sad but true.

    --
    Drill baby drill - on Mars
  44. Well, if... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...people were PAYING customers, then these sort of surveys would mean something.

    but since the services are free...well...there's nothing stopping people from taking their "business" elsewhere.

    Otherwise, they can shut it.

  45. Blizzard, racing to the bottom by Chibi+Merrow · · Score: 1

    The really great part about this, to me, is that Blizzard is still going to blaze forward with a depraved interbreeding of their games with Facebook.

    "Hey guys, I've got a great idea! Let's hitch our wagon to the service with the second-lowest customer satisfaction on the Internet! It's so crazy, it just might work!"

    --
    Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
    Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
  46. Hmmm... by Lythrdskynrd · · Score: 1

    Where's the "Like" tag on this article?

  47. You get what you pay for by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Something that is offered free to its users and lousy customer satisfaction - who would ever thought that possible?

  48. Not quite irrelevant by DragonWriter · · Score: 1

    Whether the users are happy or not doesn't mean squat to Facebook because their users aren't their customers.

    Its true that, instead of customers, their users are the suppliers of the product that they sell to their customers.

    However, that doesn't make user satisfaction irrelevant, as user satisfaction is a key factor in user retention in the presence of alternatives.

    There was a time when MySpace was the dominant social networking site, and if Facebook can't keep its users happy, it it won't keep its users indefinitely. And without users, it won't have anything to sell to its customers.

  49. Reporting Failure by fast+turtle · · Score: 1

    Of Course the damn Article makes a fundemental Mistake. That mistake is who the customers are. In the case of Facebook and MySpace it's the Advertisers, not the ef*** users.

    --
    Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
  50. addthis,followthis,sharethis are blocked in ABP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    More and more sites add that annoying "Follow this on Facebook" bar at the bottom of the window. Lots of scripts from FB to link page to tweedle dee or tweeedle dumb. More and more clutter, features I won't use and making the page slower to load. I will probably end up with a *.facebook.com/* rule

  51. Just use it as a classmates.com substitute. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's really all facebook is good for. once you reconnect, communicate in the traditional ways, via email, (and if they are circle one friends) via phone. If you have time to spend on facebook developing some grand record of your life, you really have too much time on your hands and are either idle rich, or aren't doing anything important.

  52. Customers and oranges by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They should have asked Facebook's customers how they like it. Instead, they asked the merchandise. Who cares about how they like it? They're not going anywhere.

  53. They go backwards on their interface every release by Is0m0rph · · Score: 1

    The people coding Facebook seem to be not in touch with their users. Every time they upgrade it they make the interface worse and piss everybody off. You used to have the status feed and the news feed. So the status feed wouldn't show any game spam just your friend's status updates. So they got rid of that. Then the news feed let you sort by game type and other filters. That was too user friendly so they got rid of that. Now you just have the news feed where if you play any of the social games you see tons of spam unless you hide it. But if you want to help friends in a game you can't hide it. Everyone is used to using the gift system so they are going to get rid of that now and force any gifting to personal email accounts outside of Facebook. They just added their own currency system so they can screw the (mostly) game developers out of money when it's those games that really caused the boom of Facebook users. They'll probably keep it up and the next new social network will rise and everyone will ditch Facebook.

  54. Everyone can do better by X-Ray+Artist · · Score: 1

    We are all like a bunch of drunks at a bar solving all the world's problems (If people would just listen). We all have an opinion about how things ought to work. Unfortunately some things conflict with others and won't work together. Wow! Sounds like humans.

    --
    I would have a sig but I am too busy updating programs and restarting my computer
  55. Abysmal? by sonciwind · · Score: 1

    I had no idea that many people weren't completely disgusted and outraged by it. They're doing better than I thought.

  56. Re:Missing the point: WE are not customers to FB by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

    Once you realize that, their lack of "customer service" isn't surprising in the least. So long as you're not paying for the service, you're not a customer.

    The only 'Customer Service' reps users can expect to see from Facebook are essentially border collies.

  57. This survey is erroneous by al0ha · · Score: 1

    The users of Facebook are the product, not the customers. The customers are the advertisers and others who Facebook sells all the data they mine on their users, so the survey should have been polling those who buy data from Facebook, not the human product that uses it.

    This is not my original idea by the way, I first heard it from Bruce Schneier and realized he is correct.

    --
    Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
  58. Two simple rules for life by Capt.DrumkenBum · · Score: 1

    1. Never put anything online that you wouldn't tell/show your boss, and your parents.
    2. All companies are out to survive and grow. Any changes that they make will be for those purposes, NOT for your benefit.
    Additional: They will screw you if it helps them survive or grow.

    --
    If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
  59. Human nature strikes again by Haxx · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Facebook allows you to communicate with almost anyone you have ever known, for free. Yeah screw them, they suck. This article is all over the web and it is worthless and meaningless.

    1. Re:Human nature strikes again by John+Hasler · · Score: 1

      > Facebook allows you to communicate with almost anyone you have ever known

      Why would I want to do that? Almost all of them were, at best, uninteresting.

      --
      Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
    2. Re:Human nature strikes again by FunWithKnives · · Score: 1

      Facebook allows you to communicate with almost anyone you have ever known, for free.

      That certainly doesn't mean that users should be dissuaded from voicing satisfaction (or in this case, lack of) with its interface or the company's policies and implementations. Those who use Facebook are still customers, whether or not doing so is technically "free." Without customers, the service is nothing.

      --
      "We may face a scorched and lifeless earth, but they're accountable to their shareholders first."
  60. Re:Missing the point: WE are not customers to FB by dunng808 · · Score: 1

    Claiming that Facebook users are not customers obfuscates the report's intent. It distort's the site's business model. It is the kind of cheap rhetorical trick often used by the far right, people like Rush Limbaugh, in a desperate attempt to discredit someone.

    I have seen and use far worse sites. MapMyRide for example, although they are about to roll out a new site design. One of my favorite sites is Flickr, but even they have problems. Creating a new set feels like a mystery adventure game.

    Users are customers. Facebook cannot afford the staff to provide much hand-holding, just like PayPal in its first few years. That does not mean they are unaware or uncaring. Their revenue stream depends on ad income, and that depends on users.

    There used to be (still is?) a camera store in Chicago that had rock bottom prices. Their sales staff would not take the time to explain anything. They were enormously successful. Across the street was another camera store. Their prices were higher. They did very well, because their customers were the ones who could not get the time of day from the other store. Perhaps some of you who frown at Facebook would be better served at anther site, such as http://www.linkedin.com/

    --

    Gary Dunn
    Open Slate Project

  61. Re:Missing the point: WE are not customers to FB by coryking · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Nonsense. Facebooks customers are it's users. You piss off the users too much and you lose their traffic. Lose the traffic and you lose your ad revenue.

    Bottom line it is in the best interest of Facebook to please its user base.

  62. Re:Missing the point: WE are not customers to FB by ukyoCE · · Score: 1

    Bad customer service makes their userbase ripe for the taking by any other social network. They don't have a proprietary wall like a custom format to lock us into their particular service. The critical mass of users is the closest they have, but that isn't so difficult for users to re-create elsewhere in the same way Facebook got it.

    The fact that no other serivce has started taking over Facebook's marketshare could mean its hard to do right. Or it could mean that serious competition is right around the corner.

  63. Go Blue! by stevebetch · · Score: 1

    Ya gotta Love the University Of Michigan!!!

  64. People are Masochistic by Psaakyrn · · Score: 1

    Only conclusion I can think of when people decide to stay with a product they are dissatisfied with, when there are other alternatives around.

  65. Re:Missing the point: WE are not customers to FB by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's partly true, but it's a bit like saying grocery stores shouldn't bother to refrigerate food because it's merely the product.

  66. They are 6th to last according to these guys.... by caffeinejolt · · Score: 1

    This report ranks customer service amongst popular companies/services. Obviously it is not apples to apples since many of these services require payment to render customer service, but I'd say it seems to reiterate the main point of this thread.

  67. Defector by Chicken_Kickers · · Score: 1

    Yet, defected I did. I got on to Facebook fairly early, back when I had to take a lot of effort to convince my friends to sign up. Now, I have to do the opposite. Now, when someone tells me he will put something on Facebook for me to see, I have to spend 5-10 minutes explaining why I deleted my account. Happily, after a few days of withdrawal symptoms, I realized how useless Facebook is. Most of the people on my "friends" list are not true friends, but only acquaintances. Most of my real friends are near me or reachable by phone or email. I also realize that I don't need to know what some semi-stranger ate for breakfast, or how angry he is at Japanese whalers. I already get this during morning tea at the lab I work in or when I go out for lunch with co-workers. I also finally accepted that losing touch with friends is natural. There are usually some good reason why you grew apart with someone and no amount of Friending or Mafia invites could ever return you to the old days. While it is sad, you will go on to make new friends (and enemies) and that is life.

  68. Peabrained by isochroma · · Score: 0

    What kind of peabrained 'user' would be 'satisfied' with this CIA operation?

  69. More accurate headline then by snowwrestler · · Score: 1

    Facebook Product Satisfaction is 'Abysmal'

    --
    Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
  70. Stuff Facebook Sahayinas & Arseholes! by akayani · · Score: 1

    Man after the flotilla deal I went looking for more information. Joined a FB group called "We are with Gaza". Now I'm the webmaster of the page, a page that lacked a moderator for a long time.

    1. Despite several people having spend days removing crap that was input during the unmoderated period, I can't get FB to remove blocks on the page that prevent admins from posting, apps being loaded, static pages being updated etc.

    2. My Facebook account that I've held for 3+ years... I've lost that plus 2 other accounts in 4 weeks. After asking around, I've discovered just about everyone involved in any discussion about the flotilla or Israel has lost accounts, some of those people have lost multiple account in the same day. We aren't talking terrorists, Muslims, Arabs (although they are targeted for the delete) but people over 55 who are very modest in their comments.

    Admittedly there is an Israel machine...

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_for_Accuracy_in_Middle_East_Reporting_in_America
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayanim
    http://www.causes.com/causes/41268
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaphone_desktop_tool
    http://www.thejidf.org/

    If Facebook has any real value there shouldn't be accounts going 'missing' no matter what subject you are discussing. I'm way pissed as some of what I'd been recording on my FB was part of the work to get ethics approval for my PhD. What other topics are being treated like this?

  71. keeping info private is "virtually impossible" ? by walterbyrd · · Score: 1

    Why is it "virtually impossible" for facebook to keep my addresses private?

  72. Class balance by xmorg · · Score: 1

    As with most MMO's, the usually the sudden drop in customer satisfaction is due to constant nerfing and class balance.
    The eternal argument between thieves and mages as to who does more DPS, whether or not a hybrid can tank as good as a pure warrior, and the place of a "jack of trades", in raids. The prevalence of "doods" also dampens the wonder of the MMO...

    Facebook has made dozens of nerf's to its site in the last year which has not set well with the old people who use it much more than myspace.
    There is nothing more annoying than looking at your home screen and seeing someone who has been playing farmville all night and published every single action they did to all of their friends.

  73. all it would really take for me is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...a better signal-to-noise ratio. For instance, if my dad posts something, I'd call that an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10 on importance to me. He's family - that's how it is. If he recommends something, or if something's linked via his network, or whatever, that's more like a 2 or 3. Frankly, we don't run in the same circles. On the other hand, a close co-worker might have scores of 6 and 5, respectively. I'm a little less interested in what he's up to, but I know he's going to recommend or be connected to some interesting stuff.

    Right now, I get updates from people I haven't seen since high school - yeah, be friends on Facebook, that's fine, but I don't care what your kid I've never met is doing right now. I get dope runner farmville whatever-the-hell-it's-called time-wasting mini-game stuff. Basically, signal-to-noise is much too low.

  74. Re:Missing the point: WE are not customers to FB by sourcerror · · Score: 1

    You and I are not customers to Facebook. We're the product.

    Want a bite of Soylent Green?

  75. Allow me to block ALL games! by wwphx · · Score: 1

    I mostly use their iPhone app, and it really frustrates me when a new game comes out and everyone jumps on the band wagon. I have to sign on on my laptop then disable every freakin' game. I'm personally not too concerned about the privacy aspect though I certainly respect those with that concern, but if they'd just let me block all game apps, I'd be blissfully happy.

    --
    When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
  76. Re:Missing the point: WE are not customers to FB by clone53421 · · Score: 1

    Sigh. I’m so tired of the users-vs-product debate. It’s a ring arrangement. You can’t call any particular one a “product”.

    Users need services provided by Facebook who needs revenue which they get from their advertisers who need the users to view their ads.

    Is that really so complicated?

    --
    Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
  77. 'Leaving' = bad metric by SemperUbi · · Score: 1

    I haven't used FB in months, but have kept a minimal profile in case people use it to get in touch with me. Some 'active user' metric might help, but 'total users' can't capture the rise in zombies like me.

  78. it's just buggong me... by vuffi_raa · · Score: 1

    Facebook, MySpace Get Failing Grade on Customer Satisfaction

    they rated a 64% in most places that is a D- which technically is not a failing grade