Facebook Faces User Backlash, Rumors as Conference Opens
Friday, September 23rd, 2011As Facebook opens a one-day conference for developers in San Francisco, the social networking giant is awash with user reactions to new changes and rumors of coming announcements. The new announcements at F8 — including a socially oriented music entertainment service and an app for the iPad — could help the company turn back a possible challenge to its dominance in the social space by the new Google+ service.
The updates to Facebook, announced Tuesday, include a scrolling, Twitter-like news ticker and a new feature to automatically sort a member’s network into smart lists that include close friends and family, but the social sphere is filled with complaints by users about the new features. The tone appears to be that many users are angry about Facebook’s attempts to value certain information about certain friends above other friends in their Newsfeeds. But, with about 750 million users worldwide, reaching unanimous consent is unlikely.
Watch, Listen, Read
One of the biggest expected announcements is the addition of “Watch, Listen and Read” buttons to complement the widely used “Like” button. A new social-entertainment dashboard is expected to include the ability to share video, songs and shows, and to see friends’ favorites in those categories.
There are also reports of tie-ins with various music streaming services, such as Spotify and Rhapsody. But Facebook has been down some of those roads before, such as when it faced huge user negative feedback several years ago for automatically sharing purchasing decisions through its Beacon service.
There is also speculation that the company will announce a kind of virtual living-room movie service, where friends can remotely watch the same TV shows or feature films and chat about them in real-time. Rumors suggest that Hulu or Netflix might be partners in such a venture.
The Challenge of Google+
Even as it tries to push…
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