Complaints, Complaints.

During the last few days, that high-pitched whiny sound you’ve been hearing is the collective groan of legions of Facebookers, distraught with the latest round of changes to the grandaddy of all social networks.

Never mind that some of the new changes are super cool and will add entirely new dimensions to your social media experience.  Or that Facebook is getting rid of useless features (ahem, poking).  It doesn’t seem to matter: people simply can’t accept that Facebook is adding new features and changing the look.

Whenever Facebook makes these changes, I feel like I’m in the movie “Groundhog Day”, where Bill Murray is forced to live the exact same day over and over.  This is the second time this year that Facebook has announced major changes (click here for my previous post), so it’s not like Facebook users are unaccustomed to modification.   And yet every time they announce it, I see repeated complaints:

“Why, Facebook?”  “Why fix something that ain’t broke?”  “I like it the way it was… curse you!”  And one of my friends posted this beauty:

All of the people who complain seem to forget that at one point, the Facebook they currently know and love was also a new change… one they probably raised holy heck about when it was introduced.

Some people claim, “Facebook is just trying to make these changes to compete with Google+.”  After listening to the f8 live conference, it became obvious that these changes have been in the works since last year, long before the fledgling social network by the Internet’s 800-pound gorilla poked its head up to see its shadow.

Have any of these complaints ever caused Facebook to say, “Oops, sorry, that was a bad idea.  We’ll go back to the old way.”  Nope, not once.  Yawn.  I love my Facebook friends, but it’s getting old.  Can we PLEASE stop complaining?   Let’s stop being so resistant to change and embrace the new.

f8 Conference

This was my first time watching f8 and while it was certainly interesting, I felt like such a geek.  But that’s an occupational hazard in my business and I freely proclaim that I own my geekiness.  I’m not going to provide a huge long list of all the changes because those are all over the Internet, but here’s my observations of the f8 summit:

(1)  Comedy Opening: Andy Samberg does a decent Mark Zuckerberg imitation, and Zuck is proving to be a good sport about it.  Samberg’s best imitation though is still Mark Wahlberg.

(2)  Timeline: It’s going to be amazing to see my whole life in the new format.  It will be phased in on Sept. 29 for most of us, but you can do it to your profile now.  Click here to find out how.

(3)  Netflix Integration:  So NOW we know why Netflix made that seemingly idiotic move of separating the streaming from the “discs in the mail” service and raising rates.  They are moving a portion of their more profitable, streaming division over to Facebook!  I just hope they expand their streaming library because lately it has kind of stunk.  I mean really… is it truly necessary to remove the first 3 seasons of “Dexter” and the first season of “Downton Abbey” from their library?

(4)  New Vocab:  For awhile there, that whole f8 presentation sounded so nerdy (I realize this sounds repetitious in and of itself) – “We are adding verbs.”  Really?  Verbs?  Wow, that’s so exciting.  (Actually, it is pretty cool.)  And how surreal to hear Mark Zuckerberg using the words “frictionless” (influenced by the Winklevoss twins perhaps) or “serendipity” (again, where are the Winklevii when you need them).

(5)  Pre-Show:  Is the pre-show really necessary?  It seemed diabolical that Facebook would tell us they were starting at 10:00 Pacific, and then subject us to those inane commentaries and that loop of repeating music… and then start 10 minutes late.  Couldn’t Facebook please just start on time so we don’t have to listen to all of these people whose comments were the verbal equivalent of nails on a blackboard?

And now that I’ve just complained about the f8 conference (as my friends have complained about Facebook’s changes), I guess that makes me just as bad as everybody else.  Have a great weekend!