Mr. Mark, I Am Fed Up with Your Facebook
To: Mark Zuckerberg, Top boss of Facebook
From: Rakesh Raman, a Facebook friend
Rakesh Raman
Hi Mark,
Hope you’ve received my previous message that I sent you a few days ago. Although I haven’t got any response from your side, I see that your Facebook’s plight is going from bad to worse. And if you didn’t get your act together, it’ll soon be reduced to a Web ruin.
As I’d promised, I’m writing you my next message. Let me begin again with the number of users on Facebook – that you claim are over 1 billion. I’m sure that this is a grossly inflated number that you use to bamboozle the gullible advertisers and other Facebook stakeholders.
Assuming that there are over 1 billion monthly active Facebook users – as you claim – there should be at least one-tenth of them (that is, 100 million) available on Facebook at any given point of time. Do you agree?
Then what stops you from displaying this number at top of the Facebook page in real time? Why can’t you keep it transparent instead of concealing it from users? This shows that the active number of users is not even in millions while you claim that these are over one billion.
I’ve created a sample for you to overcome this problem. Check out the red text (Current Number of Users Online: 8765) in the picture below to understand what I say. This text should always appear on every user’s Facebook page in an honest manner – no fudged figures. Okay?
Plus, you’d have seen that a handful of users who come on your site, don’t get any social connectivity, though you call it a social network. The engagement is totally missing. People keep throwing pictures, videos, article links, etc. but they hardly get any Like or comment for them. Most have to press Like themselves for their own posts.
And do you know who is using your Facebook? There are a few retired types who come every day to kill their time on Facebook because they don’t have any other real-world hangout where they could hobnob with each other.
They’d pull out a newspaper link from somewhere and keep writing useless comments from morning to evening under that link. They pretend as if they’re experts on every subject on earth. But actually they’re lamentably naive.
Aging women who have lost interest in their families, shirkers who have become burden on their employers, idle junkies who are addicted to Facebook games, and salivating souls who’d ooh and aah on anything “uncovered” are among your Facebook users. There are hardly any social workers like me who have jumped into this mud to clean the mud.
You’d agree Mark; you didn’t produce Facebook for these downtrodden hoi polloi. It was supposed to be for avant-garde ideas and mentally developed communities. Oh, what has it become? Poor Facebook. Think Mark, think.
You need to do many corrections. Among other things, I suggest you start displaying at least the number of clicks under each hyperlinked post that a user clicks in the common updates area (or News Feed) of Facebook to show the true interaction with a user’s posts.
Check out the red text (Clicks: 3) in the following picture that I have created for you as an example.
Try to make Facebook as transparent as possible. Otherwise, people will call it a shady service run by a crooked company. I’m sure Mark; you won’t like that to happen. Or do you? Get all your figures audited from a neutral and competent jury under the supervision of Federal Trade Commission (FTC). This is important.
Now, let me tell you some more flaws on Facebook. By now it’s an open secret that people in your company don’t understand even ABCs of user experience (UX) design. You keep changing the design of your so-called Timeline frequently is the proof of the fact that you yourself are never satisfied with the Facebook UX.
And now it has gone completely out of your control. Tell me who these nine faces are that always keep hanging on my profile page under the Friends section. It looks like a permanent poster pasted on my page, as these faces hardly change. Worse, there is no option to switch this nine-face display off. Similarly, you keep showing people in chat boxes who are never available for chat. Why?
The only thing I like on your Facebook is the “Blocking” feature that gives me the option to block all those spammers who keep calling me for games, events, groups, etc. But can’t you give me a blanket option to switch off all such unsolicited calls once and for all, as I will never be interested in these time wasters?
I can go on and on to help you refine your Facebook. But I won’t. Then what will your workers do? Call them. Okay?
And it’s not only about the individual users; the state of affairs on Facebook corporate pages is equally bad. Today, many companies are trying to hoodwink the consumers by showing the number of Facebook Likes on their brand pages.
But the truth is that the fake Facebook Likes are freely available on the Web at the rate of peanuts. They can’t be the true measure of a brand’s popularity. You know that, Mark. Then why do you allow these fraudsters to use your property for such deception? I always thought you’re an honest man who will not fall prey to these monetary temptations. But was I wrong in my thinking? Tell me, Mark. Tell me.
Now after closely observing the Facebook story, I’ve more belief in the maxim: “As you sow, so shall you reap.” It has already begun in your case. You must be looking at Facebook’s share price that is falling fast as if there’s no bottom. This is just the beginning, Mark. You can avoid this curse on your company by running it ethically.
Hope you’ll listen to my advice this time for I’m your true virtual friend. And let’s stay connected. I’ll be back.
[ Also Read: My Open Message to Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook ]
