Tuesday, September 14, 2010

A Few Suggestions for Facebook

I'm one of those people who gets annoyed whenever Facebook changes. I don't get annoyed because change frightens me (it does); I get annoyed because none of the changes are the sort of changes that Facebook should enact to make it a better social networking tool. Let's be honest, that's what Facebook is: social networking. And the point of every social network is to make the cool kids look and feel cooler and the dweeby kids (like that one who posts links to his own blog constantly) feel worse about themselves. So I sent Mark Zuckerberg an e-mail with these suggestions to make Facebook a better, less hospitable place. Here's a copy of the e-mail I sent him.

Dear friend Mark,
Facebook is really great, but sometimes when I use it, I can delude myself into thinking I'm cool. Could you change it around a bit to fix that? Here are some suggestions to help distinguish cool kids from not cool kids.

1) In addition to a "Like" button, how about a "Like... NOT!" button? That way, cool kids can use sarcasm, one of their best weapons, to demean people with statuses about Twilight or their own blog.

2) You receive a notification when someone accepts your friendship. Now man up and make Facebook gives out notifications when someone rejects your friendship. And make it go automatically to the newsfeed. If possible, let the person who rejects the friend request give a reason. Eg. "Brian rejected Luke's heartfelt friend request because Brian doesn't like to be friends with people whose girlfriend he has slept with."

3) Once you reach a certain number of Facebook friends, you should be able to steal friends from your enemies without them knowing. That's how it works in real life; it's only fair that it be like that in Facebook.

4) Only the person who posts something should have the power to delete it, no matter whose wall it is posted on. Otherwise, it's straight-up censorship. If I want everyone who looks at so-and-so's wall to know that so-and-so is a penis, so-and-so shouldn't be able to hide that.

5) On a related note, make gifts actually valuable, so that so-and-so will have a means to bribe me to take down that post about him being a penis. Acceptable gifts could be actual gift certificates to a place like Hooters, lottery tickets or other people's passwords.

6) Relationship statuses should have a blank left in front of them so that friends can fill in an appropriate adjective. Then there can be a run-off vote to see which adjective fit bests.
Eg. Brendan is ________ single. 
a) obviously
b) pathetically
c) reluctantly
d) ,ThanksToARestrainingOrder,
 e) all of the above

Hope to see these in the next update!
Your user,
-Brendan

So we'll see where this goes. He'll probably reply back and ask me if I have any more suggestions because these were so great, so if you have any pointers, feel free to add them!

2 comments:

  1. You should tell Mark Zuckerberg to add a "suck it" button to go along with the like and like...NOT! buttons. For example:

    Mary Lou is at a CUST regatta! Rather than liking this statement, one should be able to exclaim "suck it!" loud and proud for all of the world to see.

    Hope you enjoy our suggestion!

    Love,
    Your #1 Fans

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Marie"
    A "Suck it" feature is a wonderful idea. I tried suggesting it to M.Zberg, but it came out all wrong when I mentioned it. I just ended up telling him to "suck it." Maybe next time I'll be more tactful about it.

    ReplyDelete