I am not a big "Facebooker" to begin with, although I use it to keep in touch with friends and family. But recently I have more inclined to use the mobile version of Facebook over the web. While I use my phone for all kinds of things, if I am in front of my desktop or laptop I would much rather just bring up the site there than be forced to use my phone. Recently though Facebook has begun forcing me to use my phone to check their site and communicate. I have to say that the mobile app, and even the mobile version of the site, are a MUCH BETTER user experience than the web version.
My biggest complaint is that on the web version the news feed is constantly refreshing with new content. Facebook PLEASE give me the option to refresh my feed myself like Twitter does. I realize there is new content and new ads that you want me (force me) to see, but it is a very unclean and unfriendly experience.
The final straw though has been happening to me over the past week. At first I thought it was just a glitch in the site, but now I am realizing that the powers to be at Facebook really just want to piss off their web users. As I scroll through the news feed and there is a photo or something I want to click on, when I open it up to the pop-up window, then close that window, the news feed completely refreshes and I am back at the top.
These experiences are both fine and great, but the bigger issue is two-fold. Not only do I now have to scroll back down to try and find where I was, but also for some reason the content has completely changed. Posts that were there a minute ago are no longer to be found and there are completely new posts showing. This is especially true if the photo or link you clicked on to initiate the popup was for a news site. Now in someone at Facebook's infinite wisdom I no longer care about that news story and it has disappeared.
I know I am not the only one that is complaining about this. A quick Google search will reveal hundreds of complaints about this very issue and it is only gotten worse over the past few months. So I beg you please Facebook let the user control their news feed and when/if they want to refresh it. It is not that difficult!
Until then I will use the mobile version and each month gladly send you a bill for the amount of data you are forcing me to use on my phone.
