In the last three months, I've gotten a lot of work done. College assignments got completed and submitted quicker than usual, side-projects were receiving more attention from me and I even managed to apply for numerous graduate jobs, securing one before the vast majority of people I know. I'm not saying that all of these came about as a result of less online social-interaction, but it definitely contributed.
However, given all that, I decided this week to re-enable my Facebook account and log back in to Twitter. I spent a few minutes browsing my Twitter feed, reading updates from my friends and people in the industry that I follow. Not much had changed, which is a good thing since I quite enjoyed using Twitter. Then I looked at my Facebook news-feed. The difference was astonishing.
It took a decent bit of scrolling before I found any post/photos of interest. So many sponsored posts, so many posts from people and companies I'm not connected to, nor have any interest in connecting to. It was a dramatic difference from my reaction when I logged back in to Twitter. Here are the four main things that bugged me, and probably the four reasons I'll be spending much more time on Twitter than Facebook for the foreseeable future:
Other pages posting about a page I like
This was the main annoyance. The example above shows a page called "Football Live Scores Update" posting about FC Barcelona, who's page I have previously liked. Now I have never heard of "Football Live Scores Update" nor have I ever gone searching for them, so why am I seeing what they post? FC Barcelona are a very popular football club and I'm sure there are thousands of people posting about them every day. I don't want to see these people's posts, the same way I don't want to see this page's posts either. If I wanted to, I'd have liked their page instead.
Displaying what my friends like
This annoyance is probably nit-picking, but it's one that really bugs me anyway. The example above isn't a great example since it's clearly a charity page of some sort which I have no problem seeing. However, you could find hundreds of examples of this for all different sorts of company pages, regardless of whether it has any relevance to you. Just because my friends or relatives like a page does not mean that I will. If it were a small text post just saying "Joe Bloggs liked SampleCorp Ltd." then I'd have no problem, but they're large posts designed to get your attention in the hope that you'll click like or view the page yourself.
Ecards
This is not a gripe with Facebook, but with some of it's users (even worse, they're people I'm friends with). Some people see a funny photo/image online and decide to post it for all their friends to see. That's fine. Then there are people who go on to websites dedicated to hosting these ridiculous Ecards and decide to post every second one they see. Newsflash, I don't want to see twenty separate posts containing your hilariously satirized opinion printed on a card with a black and white drawing to accompany it.
Popular posts I have not liked
You'll see this one a lot. When a post gets popular, garnering tens of thousands of likes and comments, Facebook all of a sudden decides it'll check and see if I like that post too. These are usually a video posted by a person/page dedicated to posting and reposting the same content with the intention of them going viral (or as viral as a Facebook post can go). Again, a post or video I have never seen before by a person I have never heard of appears on my news-feed because a single friend liked it.
These are only my own gripes with Facebook, but I definitely believe they detract from the user experience. Twitter keeps it simple. Sure you might occasionally see a sponsored tweet or search result, but it's not intrusive. With Facebook I have to scroll past all the crap to reach a single post of interest to me.
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