Complaints about Facebook’s changes to the site today defy measurement.
Publicly visible status updates that complain appear to be going up as public status updates at least once every ten seconds.
Comments on these posts are going up much faster than we can count.
Plus we have no way to tally the number of complaining posts using the new privacy settings to limit visibility to friends.
So is the technology behind the upgrade to the news feed actually making it look like more people are complaining about the change than usual? Or has unhappiness with the site organically reached an above average level?
Ever since Facebook launched the news feed in September 2006, people have complained about nearly every single change made to the site. If anything, the company has come to expect gripes in response to changes.
But this time around, it’s at least worth asking the technology itself is encouraging more complaint postings. The topic clustering and delivery of subjects that users interact with the most shows the complainers and those who dialogue with them more of the same. That helps foster more conversation on the topic.
To be fair, I have seen a couple of posts in favor of the new changes, but these optimists are outnumbered.
And one of the most prevalent sub-meme in all of this consists of advice: clicking one’s language preferences in the “account settings” portion of the site to U.K. English supposedly turns the news feed layout back to its old format.
Perhaps some people have been able to achieve the aforementioned results but I didn’t, so I’m inclined to think that the changed news feed might be coming to British users after U.S. audiences get it.
Readers, what proportion of your Facebook friends are complaining about the site?