Facebook Case

One of the big beefs about Facebook is that it's such a time waster. I mean, you assemble a list of a few hundred of your closest friends and then feel compelled to check in several times a day just to see what everyone's up to. It's quite time-consuming to scroll through that ever-lengthening news feed. Who has the time?

Well, most of us must, because most of us do. I know a lot of folks complain about how much time they spend on the Facebook site, but I never see anyone forcing them to do so. The minutes and hours you spend on Facebook each day are yours to spend as you wish; if you choose to waste so much time on Facebook, I think that says more about you than it does about the social network.

That said, there is something vaguely compelling, ne addictive, about listening in on the private lives of others. You get to see what your friends are doing today, what they're thinking, what they're happy about and what's pissing them off, without actually having to personally interact with any of them. It's quite voyeuristic and acceptably so. It's the online equivalent of peeking in your neighbors' windows, except you won't get arrested for it.

Not that you really want to know everything that everyone's doing or thinking. I can't tell you how many so-called friends feel compelled to tell me what a lousy day they're having (just like the one yesterday, in most cases) and what they're having for dinner and where they're spending the weekend and how great their kids are doing in school this year and why their boss really sucks and how their car isn't running right and - well, stop me now before my head explodes. But the meaningless drivel that users choose to share really isn't the fault of Facebook the company; Facebook may enable this self-centered spewing, but it doesn't create a single vacuous status update. And it's easy enough for you to defriend or just ignore anything you don't want to see.

In fact, Facebook should be commended for creating what is essentially an alternative operating environment to Microsoft's monolithic Windows. Many users stay in Facebook 24/7 and do everything from the Facebook site - send messages, post photos, play games, you name it. Who needs the Windows desktop when you have Facebook?

(And can you blame the company for trying to snag more and more of your online time? The more time you spend onsite, the more likely you'll be to click on ones of those ads that supply the company with its billion-dollar revenue.)

Still, viewing Facebook as a forum for meaningless crap is fair. If Facebook didn't exist, where would we share all the cute pictures of our dogs and cats?

They Keep Changing Things

Perhaps the most common beef I hear from the rank and file is that Facebook keeps changing things. Just when I get used to doing things this way, the grievance goes, they up and change it. And I hate change!

This is a fair and expected criticism, and one that that every company with a large number of customers can expect. The company, Facebook in this instance (but it could just as easily be Microsoft or Google - they face the same issue), wants to keep improving the user experience, making things easier to use, adding new features, keeping things from looking stale. But when you have 900 million users, changing any given item on the site is going to piss somebody off. People get used to things the way they are, and any change is annoying. It doesn't matter if the change is for the better, it's still forcing people to change their established routine. And people do not like changing their established routines. Not at all.

The latest (and loudest) Facebook complaints are about the new timeline feature, which has replaced the traditional personal profile page. Never mind that the old profile page looked like it was designed by a first-year accountant, or maybe a committee of accountants; the new timeline is something different that takes people getting used to. I happen to think the timeline is a huge improvement over the old profile page, but admit it comes with a slight learning curve. Is it worth the change? Facebook obviously thinks so.

(I will, however, bow to the somewhat more justified complaints companies and celebrities have about being forced to adopt the timeline for their promotional Facebook pages. The timeline format provides much less opportunity for customization and branding, and presents the company or celebrity not much differently than a common Facebook citizen. If I were a celebrity with a Facebook presence, I'd prefer the old profile pages, too.)

When it comes to change of this type, Facebook is damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they don't constantly improve the site, someone new will come along and do the social networking thing better; at the very least, users will start getting bored and dropping off the site. Facebook has to keep improving their offerings to hold onto their customer base, even if those improvements annoy some of those existing customers. It's the same challenge Microsoft faces with its Windows operating system, and Google faces with its search engine - how do you add new things without pissing off the old customers? I sympathize with Facebook on this one.

It's the Privacy, Damnit

Timeline changes may be the public's big pet peeve, but privacy issues are probably a more legitimate concern about Facebook today. Users and privacy groups alike are justified in worrying about just how much private information Facebook shares about its users with other companies - and that its users share about themselves.

Let's start with Facebook using and sharing more user information that it should. It's true; just by tracking user behavior on the site, Facebook knows a lot about its 900 million users. How it uses that information fuels some big-time privacy concerns.

Now, some might say, Facebook spells out exactly what it intends to do with this user information in its privacy policy. Fair enough; most websites do. But Facebook knows so damned much about so many people, because people spend so much time doing so much stuff on its site. That information could be dangerous if handled incorrectly. What if, for example, Facebook decided to share your personal information with third parties? While the company says it won't, it still could - as long as it continues to keep that data.

And, it can certainly be argued, Facebook has a history of handling private information in too public a fashion. Take the latest controversy, about so-called sponsored stories - ads in