Only heavy Facebook users will be interested in this post.
Lots of bloggers are complaining about the fact that Facebook has removed the “skip this step” option when asked for how you know a person while accepting them as a new friend. The “bug” appeared over the weekend.
First of all, it probably is a bug and will be fixed, but there is an easy way to sidestep it. Just hit “Cancel” and it has the exact same effect as hitting “skip this step” used to have. You don’t have to figure out the right way to say how you know the person from the very limited options. Just hit cancel. Trust me, when you go to your profile the person has been added as a friend.
What everyone seems to have missed here though is the fact that late last week Facebook removed the whole page redirect every time you add a friend and replaced it with the pop-up box. Not a big deal for most people, but I tend to add a lot of friends (I have over 1,200), and the few seconds it took to confirm each one with multiple page refreshes was a huge pain. Now the whole process is down to a second. Huge productivity gains, and Facebook sacrificed page views to give us this feature. Golf clap for Facebook.
Update: bug is gone. skip this step is back. everyone chill.
I have yet to find out how to indicate that you are married to somebody that added you. Which option and sub-option do you use?
Uh… it’s pretty unlikely that you met someone by being married to them - except, of course, in the case of an arranged marriage.
To show you’re married, go to Profile/edit, set your Relationship Status to “Married”, and the usual friend-name autocomplete box will appear, for you to pick the poor unfortunately person…
Mike - how does the News Feed algorithm fair now that you have SO many Facebook friends? Is much of it relevant? Have you had to tinker with the News Feed mixing desk much?
Oh, yeah?! I have 2000 friends!
I’m kind of a big deal (too).
I don’t know why people think there are limited options. Choose “Met Randomly” and type whatever you want.
It is not bad.
Orkut is the bad did u see it?
Less is more.
I think this is the most underrated feature on Facebook (also the most underutilized). Most people want to get through this because it’s annoying. In your case you have too many friends (exception rather than rule). But knowing how people are connected is very valuable information and I’m surprised Facebook doesn’t leverage that even better. Given the little overhead it takes to define a connection and the power/utilization one can get from it, I think it’s totally worth taking the time to do it.
Every time you post about Facebook I die a little more inside.
@matt, me too… so tired of it
Sorry Matt, some of us late comers are now joining the bandwagon. I signed up for hi5 last week. This week, it will be facebook.
facebook is ok but peekamo….
The problem with this feature is the fact that you have to confirm it with the other person. People don’t want to confirm because it shows their opinion of that person, albeit subtle. Also, no one feels like trying to write something meaningful, especially if it is an old friend with lots of history. The activation cost is a bit too high.
The feature would be way more effective if they removed the confirmation. Think about it. Does it really matter that my friend Dave confirmed that I met him at a beach party? Also, you’d be able to write stories that they wouldn’t approve, but they’d be useful only to you.
Another thing facebook hasn’t done is let you group your friends based on your own criteria. Brilliant! That way I can make one called “programmers” and “soccer team” and maybe “babes” if I want to. They do have groups but they’re based on what you’ve put in when you first friend them. Which goes back to what I said before.
It really does make the whole adda friend function easier and much more effecient tho. It came as a welcome surprise to me!
OMG Techcrunch cannot go a week without posting about Facebook! Now it’s becoming the Facebook help forum. PLEASE STOP!
Hey man, get a life!
Get out a bit, meet some ppl.
As a new Facebook users, I got a wee bit confused…when I tried to add my husband…still haven’t gotten it right. Have done the whole profile married to thing and it still ain’t working. I’m not an idiot I swear! And then this skip thingy disappeared….and I thought I’d done something wrong. Grrrr, have they not heard of regression testing?
Lamest. Post. Ever. So lame I had to check twice to make sure Nick didn’t post it.
Usually Duncan Riley has these kind of lame-o posts.
Just to note that I posted on the Facebook ajax pop-ups last week, and some commenters pointed out that Facebook still gets page views from them: “A background AJAX request is still regarded as a page view by the webserver - all a page view is is a browser requesting a file from the server. In the background or not, makes no diffrence”.
I have to agree with people here. What is it with techcrunch and facebook? does everybody here have stock in it?
Will Facebook be bought? Is this for real?
http://www.internetoutsider.co.....uts-s.html
I’d like to see Yahoo buy Facebook? Or has I’ve heard the other day, Yahoo get bought by Google?
Sweet. AJAX is beautiful.