Getting Best Out Of Facebook

Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter etc are very useful and people thinking otherwise are living in prehistoric times. But as entropy in the universe increases and values over time deteriorates without proper checks; so does every good thing move towards worse if not used properly.

Facebook although perfect for being in touch with loved ones (and finding them in well not so publicly available situations ;)) is more than just a website or channel. It's a platform i.e. everyone is free to develop their own applications based around the capabilities and niche of Facebook. But as aggressive marketing techniques(read greed) leads to demise of readership for a website; so does the experience of a Facebook user gets marred with infringing applications. People who had been around long may just overlook these but new users may just lose interest and never get to use Facebook to its full potential.

This writeup won't be complete without mentioning Scamville and it did raised some serious questions with kids using their parents' credit cards and entering mobile numbers just to find out that they were charged for services which they never subscribed for. But even bigger issue is that of User Experience. 


Primary purpose of Facebook is to be touch with friends but if applications on the platform become so infringing that whole UX and primary capability are in question then some steps should be taken for sure.

Some suggestions:

1. Facebook does have application ratings and in true crowd sourcing sense they should bar applications with less than a threshold ratings.
2. Applications should have demographic (age definitely) filters similar to"Ad Manager" and if they require credit card payments or third party interactions, they should only be made available to mature audience.

A Request

To all my friends. For every application that you see in your newsfeed. Do this

1. Hover over the application blurb and you will see a "Hide" button on the right
2. Click on it
3. Instead of selecting first option (which is to hide this application feed from this friend) select second option i.e. to hide this application altogether
4. Do this for all the applications 

Do this and you will have a far richer experience using Facebook.