All right, I am back with my âthink tankâ to address a fiery issue which was first exposed by me on the world of web. Few weeks back when I alarmed the Facebookâs new design of âNews & Feed Sectionâ, whole world went on debate and analysis mode. Many of analysts appreciated Facebook for such new UI and, indeed, many showed down thumbs. Ultimately, itâs users who need to cope up with such nuance on regular basis to keep them as active as before â and, of course, responsive!
However, Facebook has, apparently, rubbed the users on wrong side. The new design of News & feed Section that has been rolled out to very limited set of users as trial run is facing intense criticism from good number of users who want to settle down with nothing else but the old UI of âNews & Feedâ section.
I am not sure about the total count of users to which Facebook has rolled out the new âNews & Feedâ, but the criticism has got the traction and people have tuned up in scores against new initiative by Facebook. Surprisingly, users, who felt penalized, are making good use of comment section of the original post which first talked about the new design of âNews & Feedâ section. And, if I must have one positive comment from all long history- favoring Facebookâs new initiative – I will have to settle down with nothing more than a big âzeroâ â if I drop my own count.
Interestingly, in no time many avid Facebook users have formed a Facebook Group âFacebooks “Happening Now” Hatersâ to show their grievance and in no time more than 800 users have joined the group with their resistant comments. So, does it mean that Facebook has adopted a daunting feature this time? Many avid Facebook users feel so.
Jess saysâ I think the new feature is horrendous, it’s telling me things I either already know or don’t care about, and furthermore it has replaced the events and birthdays corner (in other words, the features I care about most are no longer visible on the homepage)â.
Another Facebook users Tessie comments âI have for the last week a news feed completely out of control. Messages keep rolling down on the right of my News Feed no update or recent button no thunbnails on my left as to who is on chat. Messenges pop up completely out of order and keep repeating. I am ready to delete my FB unless things go back to normalâ
âI am also one of the unlucky that got this. Right side panel is totally pointless, who cares if a friend likes something someone you don’t know wrote or posted? I have a lot of friends, business contacts and game friends since many of the games you provide on FB requires a big crowd to advance. This does not mean that I’m interested in their everyday life. I want to be able to follow and interact with a specific group of people, people I consider my real friends. Before I could do this by clicking most resent and then filter the news by friend lists, This is gone now and my biggest complaint. If you log on to FB after, say, eight hours the most resent option was excellent, I could just scroll down to my last logon time and see what had happened since then. Now there is no way I can follow up on anythingâ, fended by Paul Von, another Facebook user who got to fiddle with new âNews & Eventâ section.
These are not only the only the ones. Users are responding sharply to Facebook and making every attempt to roll back to older version of âNews & Feed sectionâ.
The âprivacy issueâ has been emerged as one of the most debatable aspects from all feedback and comments. The roll-out of new feature has given birth to the privacy concerns of the users, as the new feature is popping up  photos, comments and other updates of the friends of friends. Also, the removal of the top/current news from the home page, is impeding users to see âallâ most recent updates from their friends and fan pages under the News Feed on Facebook home page.
Itâs high time for Facebook to pay attention towards userâs concerns and adopt the best practices based on the appreciation and readiness of users. Ultimately itâs 750 million+ users who made Facebook worth $87 billion company today. Hope, Mark or Facebook UX or PR team is monitoring this space closely.
Just an update. We, “Happening Now Haters”, are at 1,837 members as of 9:00 p.m EST on July 21. We are averaging about 100 new members daily. And every single member is voicing the same way! Just FYI
of all the changes fb has made to its pages this has got to be the WORST one…it interferes with game play big time! Â gone are my reminders…instead there is a nauseating scrolling continously going on that makes me dizzy…there is a way around it if one uses ie (but it is painfully slow going through internet explorer), but no good way for people who use google chrome to get around the change…there is no real place to let the good folks at fb know how displeased i am…just “did this answer your question”…of course it didn’t…nothing is where it should be…there are several fb users in my home, but i’m the only one with the “new” changes…it makes one wonder if fb isn’t trying to chase people over to google+
I had it for one week and hated it. Didn’t like the ability to comment on total stranger’s pages…..if a friend wrote on one of their friend’s pages I was told in Happening Now and if I chose to I could add my own comment – bear in mind that the person was unknown to me but my mutual friend made comments on the page….Happening Now is breaching privacy I am sure…and I don’t like the thought that people I don’t know may comment on my profile that is set to `friends only’ as far as comments are concerned. Added to that is the distracting ticker movement….I didn’t use Facebook much during that time….was relieved it went but now I wonder for how long? Surely the negative feedback sent to FB in any way possible must tell them that this is a FAIL!! I just hope it isn’t going to be a regular feature in the weeks to come.
It is SO awful! I refuse to comment on anything anymore because EVERYONEÂ can see anything I comment or like now. It is ridiculous! If I leave the computer for a full day, when I come back the same things are on my news feed. So boring and nothing makes sense.
Thank you, Amit!