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Facebook Blames Email Problems On User "Confusion"

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Re: Facebook Blames Email Problems On User "Confusion"

#71

Post by brownbat »

gnaritas wrote: post #57
k-mcgrady wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "you don't need an application to managed personal relationships" You do when you're keeping in touch with friends you've made throughout your life and not just your current ones. That's the thing Facebook makes easy. Also email and writing letters don't really work. If I sent a letter to a friend I seriously doubt they would bother responding, and most people I know personally don't use email. They use Facebook.…

> You do when you're keeping in touch with friends you've made throughout your life and not just your current ones. Your friends are the current ones. Those other people aren't friends anymore, they're acquaintances, people you used to know but don't see anymore. Friend isn't a permanent status, it's the people you hang out with and see on a regular basis. If your only contact with a person is through facebook, they…

I'm not sure how these semantic distinctions affect the argument.

Replace the "friends" in his original post with "acquaintances," and his point stands.

Facebook is useful as a long term rolodex.

Re: Facebook Blames Email Problems On User "Confusion"

#72

Post by jmathai »

Splines wrote: post #36
Xcelerate wrote: post #19

I think Facebook is a great company, but their message system needs a bit of work. Last year I was at their HQ and one of the engineers was working with someone I knew on some code. The engineer said "send me a message on Facebook". So the guy sends it, and then the FB engineer said "I don't see it -- are you sure you sent it?" It took a few minutes before we all realized it had gone into the "other" section of the m…

Facebook needs to dogfood their own stuff. I remember reading about how they use IRC internally. Very cool, but it makes you wonder why they don't use facebook messages for everything.

Yahoo didn't even use Yahoo! Mail which is much much much better than Facebook Messages. It was mainly because a lot of people were comfortable with Exchange and the Calendar integration. They tried Zimbra without success.

At least they use Yahoo! Messenger internally.

Re: Facebook Blames Email Problems On User "Confusion"

#73

Post by sp332 »

brownbat wrote: post #64
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook's apps will no longer be on any of my mobile devices. They've proven that I can't trust them without a browser sandbox between me and them.

I'd say 'me too,' but I can't actually delete their app from my Sprint Evo. Well played, Facebook. Well played.

There were several reasons that I rooted my EVO but that was a big one. http://unrevoked.com/#evo

Re: Facebook Blames Email Problems On User "Confusion"

#74

Post by wahnfrieden »

theorique wrote: post #47
spaghetti wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jumping ship was easy for me. I catch-up with my local friends in person at a local bar or cafe. I catch-up with my remote friends by traveling to their city and going to a bar or cafe there. Or they come visit me. It's infinity more satisfying and relaxing that consuming status updates containing skewed and filtered representations of someone's life.

consuming status updates containing skewed and filtered representations of someone's life. I much prefer skewed and filtered representations of my friends. It's much easier to interact with a caricatured, mean-field average of my 900 or so Facebook friends (aka "the audience") than to do it (shudder) one-on-one.

Is it not preferable to have more meaningful, personal interactions with a smaller group of people?

Re: Facebook Blames Email Problems On User "Confusion"

#75

Post by wahnfrieden »

imgabe wrote: post #41
swang wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook knows most users don't want another email account that is just going to get filled with spam. So how does Facebook deal with spam? Simple, it puts it into your Others folder. Otherwise you get users complaining about spam in their messages.

Most users didn't want another email account period. They certainly didn't want Facebook to make that decision for them. It doesn't sound like "Other" was meant to be a spam folder. If that's the case why didn't they just call it "Spam" and install a spam filter to send mail there?

They do have a spam filter, and it sends items to Other.

Re: Facebook Blames Email Problems On User "Confusion"

#76

Post by sp332 »

rlu wrote: post #34

I think that a big part of this problem is that Apple played along. If I am understanding this correctly, the bigger issue here is that people's phonebooks are getting updated without consent (as opposed to the bigger issue being a different email being displayed on fb.com) and that this was only possible with Apple's involvement? Correct me if I'm wrong please. I think it's also worth noting that I have had no issue…

Facebook actually syncs phone numbers, email addresses etc. to your iPhone. So if a user's email gets hidden, it looks like they've deleted that email from their profile, so the FB app would delete it from your address book assuming that it's no longer up-to-date.

Re: Facebook Blames Email Problems On User "Confusion"

#77

Post by incongruity »

DanBC wrote: post #67
seiji wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enough of this conquer-the-universe bullshit. Their end goal is to be the entire Internet in a curated show-you-only-what-you-agree-with-so-you-click-on-more-things model. They won't stop or slow down until something else makes them irrelevant.

That model didn't work for AOL, Compuserve, Prodigy, etc etc. But they were all networks that provided access to the wider Internet. It's really weird to see Facebook working the other way round - a tiny company growing huge and grabbing more and more of the wider Internet. What next? Facebook Video? Facebook VOIP?

Didn't they already try the Facebook video idea?

(Ah, yes, here – facebook movie rentals: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/09/business/la-fi-faceb... and they already offer video posting/sharing options in one's profile)

Re: Facebook Blames Email Problems On User "Confusion"

#78

Post by Spooky23 »

bmj wrote: post #37
anon808 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I just can't figure out how to do it without losing contact with my friends." easy . . . call them, visit them, email them, write letters to them. you don't need an application to managed personal relationships.

I agree with you, but there's another issue here: some of your friends may not actually respond to email messages. Personally, I'm a fan of email and letter writing (and not a fan of the phone), but I've fallen out of touch with several friends because if you don't contact them via Facebook or Twitter (I do neither), you won't hear back from them.

You're missing the point -- those people aren't your friends anyway. The fact that you can "like" a picture of someone's kid or say happy birthday on their Wall doesn't change that fact.

Facebook can be a great tool for sharing photos and other things with your friends. But most of what is actually happening on Facebook is voyeurism -- you get to stalk people whom you sort of know.

Re: Facebook Blames Email Problems On User "Confusion"

#79

Post by mayanksinghal »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #75
imgabe wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most users didn't want another email account period. They certainly didn't want Facebook to make that decision for them. It doesn't sound like "Other" was meant to be a spam folder. If that's the case why didn't they just call it "Spam" and install a spam filter to send mail there?

They do have a spam filter, and it sends items to Other.

It is not a spam filter. I just checked my "Other" after days and found a mail that was not spam but from a old friend that I had not accepted as a friend yet. It is not 'detecting' spam but marking everything not-from-facebook as unimportant.

Re: Facebook Blames Email Problems On User "Confusion"

#80

Post by swang »

imgabe wrote: post #41
swang wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook knows most users don't want another email account that is just going to get filled with spam. So how does Facebook deal with spam? Simple, it puts it into your Others folder. Otherwise you get users complaining about spam in their messages.

Most users didn't want another email account period. They certainly didn't want Facebook to make that decision for them. It doesn't sound like "Other" was meant to be a spam folder. If that's the case why didn't they just call it "Spam" and install a spam filter to send mail there?

To clarify, what I meant was the Others folder is just their way of preventing Facebook Users from getting spam in their "Messages" page. Since no one really checks their Others folder, you don't get any spam. The side effect though is that the Others section _may_ have important messages, but Facebook can't risk having spam invade the "Messages" page.

Also if you name the folder Spam, you're acknowledging that the Facebook system can have spam, which is probably something Facebook doesn't want.

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