The first day of these changes seemed to have everyone on my “friends” list totally and completely ticked off. I saw language I’d never thought to see, and lots of banners telling Facebook that the changes were not appreciated.
It’s been a few days now, and some of the rhetoric is dying down, but there is still a lot of confusion. Old hoaxes are being given shiny, new avatars and in general, there is a lot of confusion. To a certain extent, I’m just as confused as the next person.
Part of the problem is something I learned from a horse. Horses are neophobic. They are afraid of anything new, even if it’s better. I don’t know about anyone else, but I can see that in my own reaction to things. I think we humans can be neophobic as well.
There are ways to change settings you don’t like on this new rendition of Facebook. Several people have posted ways, some of them simple and some of them that look like it would take a programmer to figure them out.
While I’ve used some of the more simple ones, I’m annoyed that I have to do so. To be honest, there was nothing wrong with the old version of Facebook, and I don’t see anything useful, helpful or innovative about the new version. All I see is more work for me.
I have also seen the resurgence of at least one old hoax. It claims that Facebook is going to start charging users. This is not true, and the info comes from several anti-hoax sites. If the changes they’ve already made don’t sink the corporate battleship, charging users would. If someone tells you that you have to do this, that or the other thing in order to not pay and still keep your account, don’t listen to them.
There is one aspect of Facebook that annoys many people. That’s all the games that are now offered. Some people find it annoying to look for posts about friends and family and having to scroll through fifteen or twenty game requests.
This may be the only useful change Facebook has made. If you are one of those people, you can turn the games off, and not see any of them. I’m not going to do that, even though I don’t play them. Some of the “requests” and comments are funny.
Like all things in life, websites are going to change. We may not see any sense in these changes, but somewhere, someone does. If this turns out to be a bad decision, social networking isn’t going to die. We’ll all move on.
Google+ is already open for business, but their format is worse than the changes Facebook has made, at least in my book. I’m willing to give this new setup a chance, but I will post and point out things that I am not fond of when a change is made. Who knows, someone might see it and actually do something about it.