Facebook got some criticism from prominent users over the past week as it introduced a Stories-like feature called My Day into its Messenger app. This was somewhat surprising because the equivalent feature in Instagram has been a huge hit over the last nine months or so and has been blamed for Snapchat’s slowing user growth in the second half of last year. However, I would argue the rollout of My Day within Messenger is a symptom of a broader problem afflicting Facebook at the moment: it’s trying too hard, especially when it comes to new features.
Caution in 2012 over Mobile Ads
Back in 2012, as Facebook was readying for its IPO, some investors were worried Facebook hadn’t yet figured out how to monetize its growing mobile audience. It had just begun to serve up ads in the News Feed on the desktop site but hadn’t yet begun to do so on mobile. The reason appeared to be an abundance of caution over spoiling the mobile user experience. In March, Facebook did introduce mobile ads for the first time but with both the News Feed ads overall and mobile ads in particular, Facebook remained very careful not to overload users with ads or overwhelm them with unexpected new experiences.
During this period, and for quite some time afterwards, caution was the watchword. It served Facebook well as mobile ad revenue went from zero in 2011 to 11% of ad revenue in 2012 and 84% of ad revenue in 2016. Though both the numbers of ads shown and the revenue they generated rose quickly, they did so in a way that didn’t break that fundamental rule of not ruining the user experience. Above all, Facebook seemed committed to prioritizing the user experience over all else, including its strategic objective to drive mobile advertising revenue.
Live Video: The First Sign of Trouble
I would argue the first signs of trouble over this apparent rule at Facebook came with its rollout of live video. That feature itself wasn’t overly intrusive at first but, over time, Facebook appeared very keen to get users to engage with the feature more, whether posting their own videos or viewing live videos created by others. That meant increasingly obvious and arguably more intrusive indicators of live videos in users’ feeds, in picture-in-picture videos which popped up in the corner of the app, and eventually in the dedicated video tab. That last was particularly egregious in its use of notification-like red numbers which indicated there were new videos available to watch even though users hadn’t turned notifications on and there was, in fact, no way to turn this feature off.
This was the first time Facebook appeared to sacrifice the user experience to a strategic objective, contrary to how it had handled the early rollout of News Feed and mobile ads four years earlier and, to some extent, it broke an unspoken commitment it had made to users. In this case, of course, there wasn’t even a direct financial incentive for Facebook to do so (unlike with its rollout of ads in 2012) and so, this was really just a case of Facebook saying the user behavior it wanted to see was more important than what users were actually doing in the app.
My Day Follows the Same Pattern
With the launch of My Day, Facebook is arguably repeating this same pattern, sacrificing the user experience for a strategic objective. That’s particularly sad because the Instagram Stories rollout was so successful. One of the best features of Instagram Stories is how unobtrusively the new feature was added, with tiny circles that appeared at the top of the screen when you first open the app and then disappear as you scroll down. When there are new Stories, and even when Instagram itself chooses to use the format to notify users about new features in the app, the notifications are subtle and not distracting.
The rollout of My Day, by contrast, is massively distracting and obtrusive. First of all, Facebook took over the camera button with a sun icon in the first day or two, messing with a core feature of the app. Secondly, the My Day stories from friends are far larger and less in keeping with the overall design of the app than their Instagram counterparts. There’s also a prominent invitation to post to your day right in the middle of the app screen at launch as well.
Unnecessary Tnnoyances
The stupid thing here is Facebook didn’t have to do any of this. Instagram Stories was so well-received precisely because it added useful functionality in a way that didn’t detract in any significant way from the existing experience of the app. You could use the app entirely as you always had without having to scroll past distracting new content or user interface elements. You weren’t accosted with invitations to share your own Stories and yet, if you chose to view Stories shared by others or to post your own, the experience was great. That, in turn, drove significant usage by the base and made the feature a hit.
Extending the feature to Messenger is absolutely logical. It worked in Instagram and Messenger feels like another natural home, given Stories inventor Snapchat’s focus on messaging. But, of course, the Snapchat experience is divided into multiple screens, with the messaging interface separate from the content interface (which is where Stories show up, alongside Discover content). Swipe right from the camera to reach Chat, swipe left to find Stories. The Messenger app, by contrast, is entirely dedicated to messaging – all the content is in the core Facebook app, now an entirely separate experience. So, if anything, Facebook needed to make the My Day feature even less intrusive, rather than more so, in Messenger.
A Breakable Pattern
This pattern isn’t set at this point – though we’ve now seen two examples of Facebook breaking the user experience to promote a feature it cares about more than its users, it hasn’t gone too far to turn back. It can still revert to its previous strategy of treating the core user experience as sacrosanct and only adding features in ways that preserve the experience while subtly introducing new features or functionality. It needs to get back to the ethos that guided its careful introduction of advertising back in 2012 and dial back the hard push for adoption of new features.
Facebook is simply trying too hard to drive user change that will come naturally if the features are compelling enough and presented unobtrusively enough to feel compelling rather than obnoxious.
Is it the “Word syndrome” ? Trying to please all users and meet all needs leads to a bloated product. I think FB is trying to find the line between several stand-alone products and more features in each… and they’re reaching “too complex” point I think. At least they’ll be studying the responses and iterating, not dropping stuff à la Google.
Plus ads. I’m not on FB myself, but my mom insisted to get on it recently… It’s overwhelmed with pointless if not objectionable ads that are also a huge cognitive burden, and that’s compounded by a somewhat weird interface. I’d be happy to tell people what’s on my shopping list if they’d just advertise that instead of silly stuff, or even to pay $10/mo to not see ads.
I’m in my middle 30’s, and no one uses fb anymore. Don’t people have other things to do?
FB can be time-effective too, say to broadcast the kids’ pics and adventures to friends and family. More as a blog than as a real-time log. My parents go into withdrawal if they don’t have their daily pic of the grandkids being charming. Or naughty.
I never cared much for diamonds or jewels,
I never was one of those money-hungry fools.
– John Denver.
That won’t apply to the CEO of Facebook.
Look’n Feel disguised as “feat thingies” should be a mere personal preference; never an annoying enforced update. Remember this: a feature for some is ultimately an annoyance for others. A feature such as “Messenger Day” is out of the context of the Messenger itself. Defacebook should consider moving this crappy piece of hipster code into…dunno…. “Moments” may be?
You can use Fluffbuster Purity to eliminate the garbage from the Facebook website in a browser. Works great.
But unfortunately there isn’t a mobile version of this to clean up the Facebook app and Messenger. I really hate the My Day feature that I didn’t ask for and cannot turn off. I’m considering un-friending everyone that posts a ‘My Day’ just so I won’t see their post in the app.
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