Sunday, December 7, 2014

Enriching Facebook experience



Apart from some changes which FB has made to its visual outlook much has not been done since the past decade. FB remains quite similar in mechanism to what it was previously. All the amendments which the company has made are limited to their visual experiences but in general the feel of website remains the same.
It cannot be denied that changes were made such as profiles being converted to timelines and the numerous times their privacy policies were modified to cater to the evolving needs of time. But since the time FB launched the ‘Like’ button back then in 2009 they haven’t really made any changes to the FB experience in general. Although the company has succeeded in banging the trust of investors and shareholders by paying attention to their mobile experience it still remains quite unclear about its user experience.
Other social forums that have been recently launched such as Snapchat etc. are immensely popular among the young generation particularly among teenagers. These platforms have also got a lot of limelight in a very short span of time. The above million online users of FB are still far more in number but it is required that they start catering to the current need of time more. Here is what they can to to make the overall experience better.

Manage notification:

The first thing Facebook should do is manage their notifications. Throughout a day gazillion notifications are sent by the company which does not even relate you. You get multiple notifications regarding events, birthdays etc. so if they can just streamline stuff in a way that people who get bothered set the settings in a way that they receive notifications regarding what is important to them or where their names have been mentioned then things would be comparatively easier.

Formatted comments and status:

FB asks you ‘what’s on your mind?’ sometimes what actually is on our mind is random and haphazard thoughts which can be bridged to make a book. So FB should introduce some formatting method which would allow readers to highlight the important chunks of the conversations. This would avoid the caps locking trend and lay emphasis wherever required.

Deliver one but better:

FB has numerous mobile applications now but they are all useless mostly. Paper by FB is one application that still delivers while the rest remain just futile ventures. So they need to streamline what they really want and then deliver. Bombarding mobile applications won’t do much good quality would.