Alex Iskold of Read/Write Web has posted a critique of Facebook. He argues that
- Facebook makes communication harder between friends because of its private messaging system and app noise
- Facebook is not for business networking—LinkedIn and Twitter are superior services for this task—because the news feed gives irrelevant info about “friends”
- Network effects don’t work with apps because of the long tail—a very few apps are used by a large number of users, a problem that is partially caused by the limited amount of profile space for displaying apps
In short, the Facebook news feed causes information overload by making too much content available. In addition, much of this content is irrelevant if Facebook is used for business networking.
Personally, I think this piece is a little hard on Facebook. When comparing Facebook to MySpace, Iskold argues that MySpace is superior because it is based around communication. However, I’m not positive that Facebook’s communication options are as poor as he makes them out to be, and it seems like—sans the news feed—his other critiques of Facebook could apply to MySpace as well.
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