Tuesday, April 12, 2011

If We All Hate FB, Why The Heck Are We There?

I spend a lot of time online.   I meet and chat with rather a lot of different people.   But I don't recall Ever chatting with anyone who had much nice to say about Facebook.   It's detractors of course are legion.     One woman I know pointedly refuses to get a Facebook account,  saying that the site is data-mining scam that no rational person should ever trust with their personal information.

Many people complain that it is literally _impossible_ to contact them for customer service.   They seem to take feedback only through online reporting mechanisms which often fail to foresee customer's situations,  and since they only allow selecting alternatives,  rather than entering  questions or concerns,  quite fail to anywhere near adequately address situations.   Indeed when one presses the Help Center option on the Account menu, one is presented with a huge array of issues one might need help with.   And information, advice and links are available for any problem Facebook thinks one might be having can be readily found for each of these issues.   But nowhere in all of that is there ever any option to call or e-mail for assistance.

Which leads me to ask,  why the heck do so many of us use their service So much,  even though we all should know by now just how difficult it will be to fix things if,  for example, we accidentally delete or get locked out of our accounts.    One user I spoke with-- who is creating FB   page applications for clients,  said simply that his clients are asking for FB apps, so he is coding FB apps.   Apparently,  Facebook is what people want today.   Buy Why?

2 comments:

Holly Jahangiri said...

It's the ultimate people aggregator. Stick around long enough, and eventually you'll reconnect with everyone you've ever met in life.

Except those few who think they're above it all. But give 'em another 5 years, they'll show up, too.

And probably claim they discovered it, or something.

Libdrone said...

I don't think my acquaintance who rants about data mining will ever show up on FB. I was amazed a couple of days ago--FB suggested I friend a woman I used to talk to way back when on Compuserve. I did and we hooked up and chatted briefly. You may well be right that eventually FB will connect me with everyone I've ever known. (Not at all sure that that is a Good thing.)