The most annoying Facebook issues to me are:
1. Not all actions have authorization. I mean some of them don’t have it at all. It is annoying when spammers mark me on their photos;
2. Group-level authorization is not good enough yet. I can’t restrict access to post on my wall for groups. I.e. I want to setup only some specific groups to be visible on my wall (have access to my wall). (on groups basis for Mafia wars).
3. There are my groups on my page? Why can’t I quickly filter wall messages by group just by clicking on it? For instance I want to checkout group “My classmates” to see what’s new there. You can individually checkout all of them but it’s pretty inconvenient.
4. No restriction by default for application or application invites. I’m getting a lot of invites to different applications from my mafia wars friends. Why can’t I setup that all invites for all applications will be restricted to me for this particular group?
5. I think they have the same issue for pages and groups;
6. It’s kind of inconvenient and anti-intuitive with access setup there. We definitely should have something like context (right-click?) actions to setup access everywhere. It’s a bit annoying to go to settings to do it;
7. Lack of wizards (step by step setup). I’m a stupid monkey. 🙂 Why do I have to know that I have to go to settings to setup something? There definitely should be “wizard-style” process which will guide me through, and this should be searchable. I want to find something by searching “wall access wizard” or something like that.
8. No “Spam” action on many items. I’m getting posts on my wall or friend tags which are clearly spam. I’d love to help facebook to get rid of them, but there are no easy ways to do it.
9. No way to set persistent status easy way and no history in chat. A lot of my Mafia wars “friends” contact me with requests.
10. Restrictions for applications should be much more granular. Other than defaults for all applications I want to control specifically what I’m ready to share with some specific ones.
Solutions as I see it might be:
1. Extend group-level authorization to all areas like:
a. wall access/posts;
b. friends tagging;
c. applications (extended system for granular authorization), pages, and groups promotions;
2. Create contra-spam infrastructure (if it does not exists) – I mean people who will be checking if marked action is actually spam. Make in-place links to mark as spam for all areas like:
a. wall access/posts;
b. friends tagging;
c. applications, pages, and groups promotions;
3. Make in-place links to adjust authorization (it could be just a link “adjust access”) in all areas like:
a. wall access/posts. It should be precise, though – I have to be able to allow only messages from “Mafia wars game” on my wall for this group. I.e. it should also take into account types of the posts;
b. friends tagging;
c. applications, pages, and groups promotions;
4. Create wizards. Make in-place links to wizards and make wizards searchable. Those “adjust authorization” links could be links to wizards;
5. Join Friends link with “Edit Friends” page;
6. Show me filter of my groups/friends (recently interacted?) so I can filter my wall posts by them.
7. Show me list of my groups/friends (recently interacted?) so I can see their wall posts quickly on my page.
8. Add history and way to set persistent status for the chat on the chat window.
I should confess: I might not be the most typical facebook’s user (I play Mafia wars), but I represent some wide group and most of the issues, I believe, are the same for most of us.
As soon as you play Mafia wars you become kind of facebook maniac, friend of hundreds of people and active user of user groups. You really don’t want to share your personal stuff with guys who are just in your mafia. 🙂
Oh, and yes, I do love Facebook, that’s why I spent my time writing this after all! 🙂
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