F#*k You Friday! New Facebook Pages

Fuck You - The Anti-Social MediaI’ve always wanted to start a feature called F#*k You Friday, and I finally got the chance today thanks to my favorite scapegoat, Facebook.

So yesterday, I’m doing my usual work and having an awesome afternoon, when I have to go to a meeting for a half hour. So, I go to my meeting, and I come back, and within 10 seconds of sitting down I hear, “Jay, does Facebook look different to you?”

Facebook decided to change how pages looked without warning any of us.

An hour and 18 minutes later, I got an e-mail from Facebook slightly explaining that pages are changing. A full hour after I’ve been trying to figure out what the heck is going on with my pages. And I’m still not clear on all the new features yet. I guess time and Zuckerberg will tell.

This is how you toy with the people who run Facebook pages as part of their job. How hard is it to tell people, “On Thursday February 10, we’ll be previewing the new Facebook pages layout. We’ll run the preview until February 28, by which time your page will be switched to the new layout.”  Would that be so hard? Is it that difficult to be helpful to your users and the people who drive people to your site and make you money?  Why did that have to come entirely out of the blue at 3:30 on a Thursday?

So F#*k you Facebook. F#*k you and your inability to give sufficient warning to the people who run pages and make your site somewhat bearable.

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29 Responses to “F#*k You Friday! New Facebook Pages”

  1. Dori February 11, 2011 at 8:51 am #

    Interesting. For my page, I got the same email as you and a link to preview what my new page would look like. On the top I had the option to switch to it now, with a warning that I won’t be able to switch back, or to keep my current page for the time being. I wonder why yours was treated differently and how much disparity there has been in their approach.

    • Sylvia February 11, 2011 at 9:04 am #

      Because Zuckerberg has it out for Jay.

    • Jay February 11, 2011 at 6:33 pm #

      It’s all in preview for me too, but at first I was like, “WTF!!!1!!” Now I have to debate about when I’ll migrate them because I don’t want it to happen out of the blue since Facebook didn’t give us a schedule when they’ll change permanently.

  2. John Morrow February 11, 2011 at 10:01 am #

    Clearly you have erred in thinking that you know better than Skynet what your followers want.

    I, for one, welcome our Facebook-brand terminator overlords.

    • Jay February 14, 2011 at 10:11 pm #

      Well, at least we’ll be able to recognize them from the giant F branded onto them.

  3. Brad February 11, 2011 at 1:32 pm #

    Unexpected, unpopular changes are the business model for Facebook.

    • Claire Wagner February 11, 2011 at 3:17 pm #

      Thank you for explaining. I think you nailed it. Personally, I had to go lie down after I discovered the change yesterday. Thank God I work at home.

      • Jay February 14, 2011 at 10:12 pm #

        This just makes me wish I had a futon in my cube at work.

    • Jay February 14, 2011 at 10:12 pm #

      And opt-out features. Don’t forget those.

  4. Camilo Olea February 11, 2011 at 3:19 pm #

    Strange. It did showed a “preview” mode for my pages and actually did told me what you say it didn’t told you.

    This does not mean I don’t feel your pain. I agree, Facebook changes stuff at will and many times it affects its users in a negative way.

    Cheers from Cancun,Mexico!

    • Jay February 14, 2011 at 10:15 pm #

      I want to be in Cancun. Why can’t I get paid to be in Cancun rather than paid to be on Facebook? Life is so difficult.

      • Camilo Olea February 14, 2011 at 10:41 pm #

        heheh :) I recently “discovered” your website. I think it’s great. Keep up the good work!

  5. Danny Brown February 11, 2011 at 3:25 pm #

    The new Page set-up is shit. The custom tabs disappear to the left and join all the other crud; the dimensions are being changed from 520px to 493px wide, so more designing (and joy when clients need them redesigned at no cost); and the whole promoted post thing seems stupid.

    Thanks, Fuckerburg, for starting the weekend in a crappy mood.

    • Chris Eh Young February 11, 2011 at 5:27 pm #

      Danny, the page widths are staying at 520. I had that confirmed last night by one of the Facebook product managers.

      • Jay February 14, 2011 at 10:14 pm #

        Oh Thank sweet baby Zuckerberg.

    • Jay February 14, 2011 at 10:14 pm #

      Yeah, I hate the new post algorithm. Clear and simple is just too much for Facebook to handle.

      And don’t get me started about all those tabs and apps I’ve made that will now have to be redesigned.

  6. Morgan February 11, 2011 at 3:50 pm #

    I rather like the new pages. Facebook is changing a lot these days, but I feel it’s all for the better. Change scares some people, though. =P

    • Jay February 14, 2011 at 10:22 pm #

      See, I will always compare Facebook to when I knew every person on it, you had one photo, and you put your college class schedule online.

  7. Melissa Galt February 11, 2011 at 5:24 pm #

    Funny part is that now you can’t tell the difference between a fan page and a profile. Pretty soon it will all be one big F*#$ing Blur! Just when we get slightly comfortable with some new change, the switch something else up. The idea is to keep us confused and guessing so they can continue to gather our data for the mass marketers! We are so being farmed.

    • Jay February 14, 2011 at 10:26 pm #

      And fan pages can comment on public pages and personal profiles now. It’s all turning into some massive crazy Farmville.

      Oh wait, we already have one of those….

  8. Amber February 11, 2011 at 5:28 pm #

    Warning would have been excellent especially considering the dimension change. We were developing a custom tab that was suppose to be live the day FB allowed us to “tour” the new set-up. Plus now we have to go back and change the size of other land tabs.

    Granted, FB is giving us a couple weeks to adapt…before all pages are forced to the new format come March 1st. It does look cleaner, but the old tabs do get lost in the mix.

    • Jay February 14, 2011 at 10:47 pm #

      Yeah, and I hate that everything now has an icon. It was easier to read the tabs.

  9. Joe February 11, 2011 at 6:58 pm #

    They just aligned the pages with the already shitty profiles. I guess they felt so bad about doing half shit, that they had to complete the job and create a bigger one…

    • Jay February 14, 2011 at 10:37 pm #

      Because there’s nothing like a big shit.

  10. Rand February 11, 2011 at 7:07 pm #

    We. Are. Part. Of. The. Collective…

    • Jay February 14, 2011 at 10:59 pm #

      That we are.

  11. Craig Batty February 13, 2011 at 5:28 pm #

    Great spit, Jay. Careful of offending The Great and Powerful Zuckerberg, even our patented tinfoil hats may not be able to repel the….. too…. late…… I am Craig66 of Borg, you will all be assimilated. Bzzzzz.

    • Jay February 14, 2011 at 10:47 pm #

      Let’s be “friends.”

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. y donde se fueron las páginas de Facebook? « Alex's Blog - February 13, 2011

    [...] Justo cuando tenía un par de colosales y maravillosas ideas que me harían ganar millones de dólares con un par de páginas en Facebook, estas simplemente desaparecieron… o sea están pero no puedo agregar cambiar ni nada. Todo esto sin más aviso previo que una nota en un blog que si uno no está atento no la ve. El amigo de más abajo piensa igual que yo, claro que ninguno va acampar en la Plaza de la libertad facebookiana hasta que las páginas vuelvan a ser lo que eran… Amplify’d from theantisocialmedia.com [...]

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