Re: providing a good UX - Facebook?!?
How in hell is that a good UX? Can't find things, can't dig back, can't organise. It's just a dumping ground. Photos get resampled, cropped and generally befouled. Videos likewise. Coments don't thread. Ads are poorly targeted bollocks if I disable blockers. Recommendations for 'you might like' are nonsensical babble.
All true. But, as scary as it may be, hardly any FB user cares about that. They typical Facebonker wants to just dump their stuff in there. They do not care about about an interface that gives them control - they want an "easy" one, and the less control they have over their stuff, the "easier" it appears.
Ten or 20 years ago, many of those people would have operated their own blog or other website, but today FB to them looks like the same thing, but much easier. Heck, even businesses these day think that a FB page is equivalent to a prober website. I know a group of people who think their CMS is too complicated, so they post all news on FB instead. Don't have a Facebook account? Tough luck, customer.
Does beating FB mean playing it at its own crazy game? Interoperating with it?
If you want to make as much money as them, yes. You'll have to rip off your users, take sneak control away from them, and sell them out in any way you can.
For another definition of success, e.g. making the 'net a better place, combining a good protocol with a good UI will probably do the trick. If it really works out well, people will adopt it and operate services on that platform. If they have enouph pull, users will eventually adopt it.
There has never been a better time to pull this off than now.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
