Facebook Application
Updated: September 22, 2011
Designer: Facebook Price: Free
iPhone: Yes iPad: Yes iPod: Yes
Category: Social
Just as it announced a rehashing of its main website, Facebook also recently released a much anticipated update of their iPhone app. While Facebook had claimed this was the app update to solve them all, the reviews are in and it looks like Facebook took a step backwards instead of forward. Here are the Top 10 Facebook app complaints:
1. Application freezes up: A iPhone app isn’t any good if it doesn’t work and the latest Facebook update has had many reports on the support page about the application failing to load. Reports on the freezing are sporadic but it can happen anywhere in the app from the loading screen to the chat screen.
2. Failure to update changes: One of the biggest complaints is that actions and changes that are made in the application aren’t being made on the live Facebook site. Things such as changing your status, your location, or even straight up post aren’t making it through to the live website, even though they show up well enough
3. Slow load time: One of the issues I’ve personally come across with the latest Facebook iPhone app update is that the load times for just about anything on the Facebook network are extremely laggy or all together time out. The chat conversations are laggy and sometimes get out of sync which can lead to some really weird conversations.
4. Quick Draining Battery: Now this is personally my number one gripe about the Facebook app, but apparently the chat interface is open continuously in the new application requiring a constant signal to the application thus draining the battery. Most iPhone apps limit connectivity to only when its necessary to reduce battery drain but currently the Facebook app is not. If I have this app open for a long time (which I like to do) my battery last me less than half as long as normal and that bites!
5. Unable to receive notifications: As of the last update I wasn’t able to get access to any of my notifications and they weren’t even displaying even though I could readily access and see them through the computer website. To test this, I sent myself an invite to a game from my girlfriends account a few hours ago and I still have yet to see the notification appear.
6. Can’t access prior update: What’s worse when you have an iPhone app that is ruined by an update? Being unable to go back to the version of the iPhone app that was working before the update was released.
7. Unable to post to “My Wall” – Your wall is your sacred place. It’s the first thing that everybody sees when they’re checking out your Facebook and it displays darn near everything you’ve done. Being unable to post to my wall is what finally broke the camels back and made me decide to stop using the Facebook iPhone app.
8. Glitches when receiving phone calls – This has only happened twice, but it’s terribly annoying. Twice I’ve used the iPhone Facebook app and someone called me. Tried to switch over but the app froze up and I missed my call. It’s never cool to miss a call when the phone is RIGHT IN YOUR HANDS.
9. Updates are slow – The last two updates have taken a long time for me to download. This hasn’t been a problem before.
10. Pictures don’t display – I don’t know about you guys but I’ve had a hard time getting pictures to display properly, especially when going through peoples photo galleries. The pictures either fail to load or load really slow. Again, this hasn’t been a major problem until the last update.
I know this sounds like a gripe fest and I’ll be honest that I might be reaching on one or two of the above points but the problem we have here is another case of over complication. I dropped MySpace for Facebook because Facebook made interacting with my friends easy and it made keeping connected easy. Now, with each update and more features, the app seems to be progressively buggy and complicated. If they don’t stop their current trend, I can see a competitor eating up some of Facebook’s unhappy customers. It happened to MySpace and it can happen to Facebook too.