Brian Rogers (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
subplotkudzu) wrote2008-11-12 07:28 am
subplotkudzu) wrote2008-11-12 07:28 am
Entry tags:
My Facebook Experience
With my 20 year reunion coming up and no way to contact the people who might be organizing it, I decided that I might as well go to Facebook and see what the damn thing looked like and if any of my old classmates were on it. So I went to the Facebook website to take a look at their user interface. No dice. All I had access to what the 'create account' page. Eventually I found a link on the bottom for 'find friends'. I clicked it and was given a handly search box to find someone. I typed in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
40yearsagotoday 's name because I knew he had an account and lo and behold there he was. Or, at least, a list showing me that he did have an account.
Which I couldn't see in any way, because I'm not a member.
Fine. So I go to back to the create account page to make an account so I can at least see the damn thing. Prompted to enter an e-mail address and password. Do so. Told to expect e-mail giving me a new link to confirm my account. Check e-mail, there it is. This opens in a new window, which tells me to find my friend I have to enter my e-mail address and password. "my, but they're security conscious," I think and enter ym e-mail address and password again.
Password doesn't match
Again.
Password doesn't match
Huh? Again
Password doesn't match
I'm not the world's greatest typist, so maybe I mis-typed my desired password on the account creation page. I back up and ask for a password reset. Get another e-mail, run through the process - including a password confirmation screen - and feel confident that this time I have it right.
To start looking for friends, enter your e-mail address and password.
Password doesn't match.
Eventually I figure out that unlike the first round of this on the initial screen (with the identical prompt design) they now want my password for the e-mail address, not the password for Facebook, so they can search my e-mail to find people with whom I am already in regular contact so that it can find them as friends so that I might be in regular contact with them. Huh? But I already have contact with those people. But I do find that if I scroll down I can skip that step and go straight to the stuff that to my mind should have come first - high scholl and college and community. So I enter East Hampton High School, class of 89
The dropdown window is too slow and unresponsive for my typing, so it doesn't even appear. Rather than show me the list of East Hampton High Schools it defaults me to East Hampton, NY and shows me a long list of people whom I have neve heard of who I might become friends with.
I skip this and eventually find the "search by name" field, type in 40YAT again, find him and learn that I can't see his page because he hasn't accepted me as a friend yet. 30 minutes in and I still can't see a working version of the user interface, or "Wall" in their jargon. Frustrated, I log off.
I log back in several hours later to see via e-mail that I have been friended by 40YAT. So I decide to try again. This time I learn that the school listing does include East Hampton, CT - if you type more slowly and let a drop down box appear to select from - but it's not possible to enter the name of the school with the state, of course, as that would be less flashy and not require mouse work on top of typing. But at least now I can see that with one exception - my Senior Class president with whom I'd have to speak in order to help with the reunion - no one from my class that I have a strong desire to contact has a Facebook page.
And now I can go see what an actual in-use page looks like via 40YAT. My God, it's a cluttered mess! This, THIS is the user interface worth billions of dollars? Ick!
Maybe I just wasn't in the best of moods when I disabled my account with a curse and logged off. But I didn't swear to ever darken their doorway again, so if someone wants to try to convince me that there's some overwhelming reason to go back there I'm happy to entertain it.
40yearsagotoday 's name because I knew he had an account and lo and behold there he was. Or, at least, a list showing me that he did have an account. Which I couldn't see in any way, because I'm not a member.
Fine. So I go to back to the create account page to make an account so I can at least see the damn thing. Prompted to enter an e-mail address and password. Do so. Told to expect e-mail giving me a new link to confirm my account. Check e-mail, there it is. This opens in a new window, which tells me to find my friend I have to enter my e-mail address and password. "my, but they're security conscious," I think and enter ym e-mail address and password again.
Password doesn't match
Again.
Password doesn't match
Huh? Again
Password doesn't match
I'm not the world's greatest typist, so maybe I mis-typed my desired password on the account creation page. I back up and ask for a password reset. Get another e-mail, run through the process - including a password confirmation screen - and feel confident that this time I have it right.
To start looking for friends, enter your e-mail address and password.
Password doesn't match.
Eventually I figure out that unlike the first round of this on the initial screen (with the identical prompt design) they now want my password for the e-mail address, not the password for Facebook, so they can search my e-mail to find people with whom I am already in regular contact so that it can find them as friends so that I might be in regular contact with them. Huh? But I already have contact with those people. But I do find that if I scroll down I can skip that step and go straight to the stuff that to my mind should have come first - high scholl and college and community. So I enter East Hampton High School, class of 89
The dropdown window is too slow and unresponsive for my typing, so it doesn't even appear. Rather than show me the list of East Hampton High Schools it defaults me to East Hampton, NY and shows me a long list of people whom I have neve heard of who I might become friends with.
I skip this and eventually find the "search by name" field, type in 40YAT again, find him and learn that I can't see his page because he hasn't accepted me as a friend yet. 30 minutes in and I still can't see a working version of the user interface, or "Wall" in their jargon. Frustrated, I log off.
I log back in several hours later to see via e-mail that I have been friended by 40YAT. So I decide to try again. This time I learn that the school listing does include East Hampton, CT - if you type more slowly and let a drop down box appear to select from - but it's not possible to enter the name of the school with the state, of course, as that would be less flashy and not require mouse work on top of typing. But at least now I can see that with one exception - my Senior Class president with whom I'd have to speak in order to help with the reunion - no one from my class that I have a strong desire to contact has a Facebook page.
And now I can go see what an actual in-use page looks like via 40YAT. My God, it's a cluttered mess! This, THIS is the user interface worth billions of dollars? Ick!
Maybe I just wasn't in the best of moods when I disabled my account with a curse and logged off. But I didn't swear to ever darken their doorway again, so if someone wants to try to convince me that there's some overwhelming reason to go back there I'm happy to entertain it.
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Er, mostly kidding. But apparently there are millions of people who believe the Internet is *supposed* to be ugly.
Or, perhaps worse, millions of people who don't *realize* it's ugly.
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Does the concept of white space and visual flow not occur to these people? Web designers should be forced to read Scott McClouds books on comics design before they actually work on a user interface....
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1. to maintain contact with the youth of today, in case I am ever in the dating market again (ha)
2. because more ridiculous members of my family were using it to set up reunions as well as a few professional contacts use it for reasons I continue to not understand. Peer pressure! Yay! Haven't succumbed to that in years!
So yeah, I have one, and it even gets updated regularly because I have it all linked up to my twitter account, which I do enjoy and find useful but mostly I find it ridiculous and annoying.
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In the last 10 minutes I have gotten two new facebook e-mails to my proimary account. One wonders why I go through the effort if this is thier usual level of customer service.