Facebook Makes Time Nonlinear Again; Nobody Rejoices

Posted on 16 May 2013 by Debbie

Oh Facebook. Remember when the Timeline was not really in time order? And then they changed it back? Facebook is now experimenting with comments being nonlinear. But not everybody is getting it, so it’s either an A/B test or a slow rollout.

I’m hoping it tests badly. Facebook comments are a conversation among many people. If you show them out of order, the conversation will no longer make sense. Facebook assume people will comment in some sort of threaded way, but they might not. Let’s not assume anything about 1 billion people!

Here is a screen shot of two posts that showed up next to each other in my news feed. One has this “new” order for comments (they appear to be arranged by likes, but who knows) and the other is just a standard, linear dialogue. Click to enlarge:

There are now 100 comments to that post. I have to wonder if anybody got confused by seeing a comment they posted in response to someone end up ABOVE the original post to which they were replying.

I can’t believe I even have to write about this. Who works in UX at Facebook? Anybody? I wouldn’t even want to work there. Seems like a culture of shoot first, go through proper UX steps later.

UX and UI inconsistencies can unnerve people. People generally don’t like change, and they especially don’t like change that feels like a downgrade of any sort. If it’s frustrating, confusing, or disappointing, people are likely to dislike it. This is inconsistent. Sometimes I have to type my comment at the top. Sometimes my comment goes at the bottom. Why? It’s not like it’s explained to me that if I type at the top, something different or special happens. Evidently nothing special happens. But there are two different interfaces.

Also notice in the top example when comments were posted. They’re all over the time number line. Even that just bangs my brain a bit.

Can you think of anything site that posts comments out of time order?

I’m thinking of every discussion forum ever. Comments under blog posts. Comments under Mashable articles. Comments under news articles. I can’t think of a single example where someone decided that time shouldn’t be linear, and comments should be arranged out of order.

I’m not sure who at Facebook thinks that making time appear out of time is something people will find clear, helpful, consistent, and enjoyable. What testing was done and how did these things test? Was testing done before this was just unleashed on some Facebook users?

Can I please suggest that companies test really new ideas and interfaces before just slapping some A/B test together and changing live experiences?

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Paying For “Resold” Food

Posted on 14 May 2013 by Debbie

There’s a huge fuss on the internet today over Amy’s Baking Company in Arizona. Evidently, Gordon Ramsay called them out for not actually baking much or anything. The owners think it’s fine to just resell things… it’s the American way. They say Walmart doesn’t make what they sell!

They had a big, famous social media meltdown today. It’s a great lesson in not doing this. But then again, if you think it’s OK to open a baking company that doesn’t bake anything, you probably think it’s OK to post these things to “followers.”

This also reminded me of a post I wrote him 2011 about how much I hate when restaurants don’t cook food… they just rewarm something that was made somewhere else.

There are goods and there are services. Walmart sells goods. I don’t expect them to have manufactured everything in their building.

Then there are services. You always hope the person you hired for services is performing the services. There are plenty of examples when you hire someone to perform services and they push it off or outsource it to someone else. You’re rarely happy about that, and you often feel lied to.

The same is true for restaurants. I think of going there as a service, but not the service of someone bringing a tray to me. It’s the service of someone cooking something as much from scratch as possible. I don’t want something an off-site mass production facility made just warmed up. I want someone to care, and I want someone to cook what I asked for.

I’ve recently had some eating out experiences where when we ordered something, the wait staff actually said, “We don’t make that here.” I really appreciated that. I can then decide if I still want it, or if I want something the chef will be making once I order it. That’s service. That’s eating out in a restaurant.

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Facebook Friends of Friends Might Be A Scam

Posted on 9 May 2013 by Debbie

We’ve all probably received Facebook friend requests from total strangers. We don’t know them at all. They’re not friends of friends.

If you are on a quest to have a pile of Facebook friends no matter who they are, then you will add these people. I only add people I really like in real life. So no matter what they message me, I don’t add them.

Lately, Facebook has been suggesting that I add some friends of friends. Facebook thinks I might know these people! So far, all of them are women around 21 years old (based on the birthday written on their personal Facebook page). They have no other profile information on Facebook. They have one profile photo that while a picture of their face is really a picture of their… shall we say… breasts. In some sort of skimpy top. Some of these women pose alone. Others pose with another stereotypical hot and underdressed chick.

All of them have about 15 Facebook friends, and when I poke around, I find that these friends seem to have nothing in common. They’re not in the same location. Not the same age. But they are almost always all MEN. I’m assuming men saw boobs in their Facebook requests, and said, “yes, please.”

Sure, people like cleavage, but this might be one of many serious scams.

It might seem harmless to friend on Facebook some boobs you don’t personally know in real life, but it can actually lead to a lot of really undesirable outcomes.

They now have access to your personal information.

Based on what you put on Facebook, these strangers might know where you live. Where you tend to go (Foursquare check-ins). When you’re not home (Foursquare check-ins). Who you’re married to, dating, who your family are. Where you work. Maybe even when you work. They could know a lot about you.

Did you put contact information into Facebook? They might have your phone number, cell phone, and email address. With enough revealed about yourself on Facebook, this could potentially lead to identity theft.

They now have access to MY personal information.

But Facebook likes to extend things out to “friends of friends.” That means some of the things I post can be seen by the person behind the Boobs account. If you commented on something I posted, that fake friend sees it. And if I’m not careful, that info might be where I live. Where I work. Who’s in my family. Places I go. When I’m not home. My phone number and email address. Et cetera.

Which they can now use for more realistic spamming.

Let’s say a friend of mine named Jim is friends with one of these Boobs, and is also Facebook friends with me. Based on information these fake accounts can scrape, they could easily email Jim at his email address and make it look like it’s from Debbie Levitt. Jim might be more likely to believe any wacky thing the email says since he thinks it’s from someone he knows and trusts. Compare that to getting a spam email from Dr. Waldorf Tecumseh Flywheel. You might ignore that outlandish name as someone you don’t know or trust.

But now, it looks like I’m emailing you. And I’m in trouble! Or I need you to click on something. Lord only knows what Fake Me needs you to click on and what information you put in when you get there.

Only make real friends your Facebook friends.

Please be more careful about who you friend, especially if you’re my friend. I don’t want you to get scammed. I don’t want information you thought was for friends only to be in the hands of people with bad intentions. And I don’t want my information in their hands either.

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Beware of Contests on Facebook

Posted on 16 April 2013 by Debbie

Contests run through Facebook. Oy. What a mess of mostly scams.

First of all, most (but not all) pages that enter you for some sort of prize (usually an iPad) if you LIKE their page are scams. Most but not all. How or why? What happens is they get zillions of people to like the page. You don’t even know what page it is. What company is it? What do they do? You don’t even know. You so wanted to win the free iPad that you just hit LIKE.

Two things then happen because you did this. One, this company (whoever the heck they are, wherever the heck they are) now have access to your contact info. They can also reach your friends through the web Facebook weaves between people and what they like. Two, the people who built that page normally then sells it to someone else. All of a sudden, you are liking (and getting marketing messages) for a clothing store or who knows what. Some company bought the page to have all those instant likes and people they can market to, and hey, you opted in.

Just remember you are the commodity for sale or rent on Facebook.

This is actually against Facebook’s rules

A friend on FB recently reminded people of the rules of contests and promotions on Facebook. Primarily, Facebook wants all contests and promos run through apps and not pages. Let’s learn more! Click to enlarge this screen shot from https://www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.php#promotionsguidelines

Check out section 4. The act of liking a page cannot be what enters someone into a content or promo. The like button can’t be the voting mechanism for a promo. Checking into a place isn’t how you enter a contest either.

Facebook wants everybody to go through apps. The down side is that if the same scammers start building Facebook apps for their completely/slightly fake contests, agreeing to use an app can actually give them MORE control over your account and info. If you like a page, you like a page, and maybe you and your friends see crap from that page. If you give an app the rights it wants, you may have just given your email address (which they might keep after you turn off the app), the right to post to your wall without you knowing, the right to grab your friends’ info… it’s a bad spiral down.

The best thing to do is to play it safe. Read full rules of contests to find out how they will use your info or access to your Facebook account. If you’re not going to read the rules, don’t enter. I don’t need you giving up MY Facebook details to some scam company because you hoped to win a lame prize worth a few hundred dollars. If you wouldn’t enter every contest that came through the postal mail, called you on the phone, or showed up in your email, why enter random contests and promos on Facebook? Remember your common sense.

My privacy is worth more than your 0.0001% chance of winning an iPad. So is yours. Just say no.

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Randi Zuckerberg’s Problem Isn’t Facebook Privacy. It’s Facebook’s UX and UI.

Posted on 2 January 2013 by Debbie

It’s like I’m psychic! I was JUST posting about how the biggest problem with Facebook privacy isn’t their terms (yet). It’s your own friends. I wrote a blog post about it.

Around Xmas, people thought that Mark Zuckerberg’s sister must not have understood Facebook’s privacy and UI because a family picture she posted ended up getting reposted to Twitter. How DID that happen? Did it happen because evil Facebook took her picture and put it out there while she flailed and yelled for help? Not exactly.

One of her Facebook friends assumed her picture was public because she saw it in her News Feed, and she reposted it to Twitter. Never repost, broadcast, publish, share, print on a t-shirt, or do ANYTHING with someone else’s stuff without getting written permission with them. Not only is that good manners, but depending on what you want to do (like print it on a shirt), you may be subject to copyright laws. Just because you saw it on the internet doesn’t mean it’s free or isn’t owned by someone who may want to enforce who can do what with it!

Randi was sure that she knew how to use Facebook privacy settings, so this isn’t about Facebook privacy.

But This Is About Facebook’s UX and UI

Play this out with me for a moment. A photo comes down your Facebook News Feed. How aware are you if that image is Friends Only or Public? Can you tell which friends got to see it? Maybe the person who posted the photo used Facebook lists or other features that allowed only 5 people on the planet to see that photo, and everybody else was blocked. As a recipient or viewer of content on Facebook, you really DON’T know the intentions of the person who posted. You don’t know how semi-private he or she meant to be.

If you’re really good with Facebook, then you recognise the little grey “world” icon here, and you know this was completely public. Facebook gives you a “share” button reminding you to re-broadcast it to your peeps!

But what would you know about an image if it had this under it:

If you notice small, grey icons, then you know this was just to his friends. You don’t know which friends. Using Facebook lists, your pal could have posted it to just 2 people. Or maybe it was to all his friends. You could stop there and think hey, my friend didn’t post this publicly… he might not want me to re-share it publicly. Yet there’s Facebook, giving you the “share” link and inspiring you to re-broadcast it. How can you possibly truly understand that people might feel “privately” about something when Facebook automatically tells people to re-publish it (which takes it out of someone else’s control)?

You don’t know from the above markings that your friend would HATE it if you re-shared the image, even just on Facebook. You don’t know that. I can only assume Facebook will have to start building that option into posts… like “turn off the share link” as an option so that people who kinda just want to share things with friends can kinda just try doing that… and hope for the best!

So while I’m not thrilled that some random woman took Randi’s photo and posted it publicly to Twitter, I can see HOW it would happen. It seems at first like a breach of the friend code, and it kinda is. But it’s ALSO a good reason to focus on the Facebook UI and realise that ideas of privacy or “can I share this” are not really clear to most people, especially when there is a “Share” link there making it seem like that’s a good idea.

Another Example

Just at the end here, I wanted to throw in another example. My boyfriend feels strict about Facebook and online privacy. So much so that he doesn’t use Facebook, and he doesn’t want me posting pictures of him or us. Weird in 2012/2013, but OK, I can do that. I also decided that on public posts, I will refer to him as “boyfriend,” and not use his name. He’s very happy about that.

So public posts (grey world icon), he’s “boyfriend.” Friends-only posts (grey people icon), he has a real first name.

I recently noticed that my friends had no idea I was doing that. And how could they. I could write that 100 times in my Facebook feed, and I can’t be guaranteed that every friend would see my request. How did I realise this? I did a public post where I said boyfriend, and one of my friends responded and used his first name.

World didn’t end. Not for me, boyfriend, or Randi. But I think these are starting to highlight how people on Facebook don’t really understand HOW public or private people feel things are. “Share” links certainly don’t help that!