I wrote an open letter back in July of 2014 to Mark Zuckerberg about improvements Facebook should make to improve Facebook and ultimately be more profitable. The article was titled Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook Profitability. I threw profitability in there to ensure that he actually read my letter because CEOs care about making a profit.
The article made it into Reuters and a few other prominent publications across the internet.
Well it turned out several of my recommendations were implemented. A few were letting us bookmark (or save) posts, giving posts end dates, and giving us a more robust search. There are still some requests on there he did not update. Regardless, I love Facebook and the functionality it brings. I love being able to communicate with people, learn from others, and share my thoughts on a multitude of topics. It is a tremendous platform.
After almost 1 year, I would like to add more improvements I think Facebook should make. Some of these are minor, some are major, and some are bug fixes I noticed. Also, most of the mobile recommendations are based on my experience using the Galaxy S7 Edge on Android. So Iphone users, your experience may be different. All desktop recommendations are based on using the Chrome browser on Microsoft Windows 8.
Let us Auto-Promote Posts Like Before
There used to be a function within the Facebook ads manager to auto-promote your latest post. That way, you would give Facebook a budget of like $5 a day and tell it to promote whatever post was your most recent. This was great for people who didn't want to make a new ad every time they write a post, but are willing to pay Facebook to increase their visibility and engagement. I think Facebook is missing out on a lot of ad revenue by turning this feature off. I personally would use it.
Let us Run Ads Automatically Based on Hashtags or Keywords
Give us the Option to Turn off Suggested Friends on Mobile
There comes a point in ones Facebook life that we don't want to see the suggested friends slider in our mobile news feed any more. For some reason when you "X" off people to get them out of your feed, Facebook thinks you like the Facebook suggested friends feature and shows it to you all the time. There should be a drop down button where you can get rid of this feature. It is annoying and ruins the experience.
Give us the Ability to Turn off Videos When not on Wifi
Facebook videos kill our data plans when we are not on Wifi. Instead of disabling the Facebook app completely when not on wifi, give us a limited version that maybe shows video screen shots instead of complete videos if we so choose, or a degraded video version (like Amazon does) until we get back on wifi. Give us more control over how much data the Facebook app uses. Because it does use more data than any other app.
Give Facebook Integration with Twitter Lists and Gmail Groups
Right now we have friends on Gmail who are in groups we have set (like friends, family, clients, politics, classmates, etc.). We also have Twitter lists of different people (influencers, politicians, businessmen, etc.). A lot of these same people on our Facebook friends list. It would be so helpful to be able to sync our Facebook interest lists either manually or automatically with our Gmail and Twitter lists. It is so hard to keep up with all of the different lists, and this function from Facebook would help solidify Facebook as the go-to place for our contacts and the goings on of our various lists.
Let us Turn off Messenger
Messenger on mobile is a very useful tool. And often people send us messages when on the Facebook app and we have to click the messenger button and we get sent over to messenger. But what is not good is the messenger "CHING" that chimes at 2 am when you are trying to sleep because you forgot to turn off messenger for 8 hours. Messenger only lets you turn it off until 8 am the next day, and then it comes right back on. This is horrible. You need to give us control over when our messenger application turns on or off and let that setting stay for as long as we like it. I know many people who have refused to install messenger because of forced stuff like this.
Let us Use Negative Keywords to Control our Newsfeed!
I can't tell you how many times I see topics that completely irritate me I don't want to see anymore. Bruce Jenner or Kim Kardashian are a two that come to mind. Or Anthony Wiener - who wants to see that? Sometimes you just want to stop seeing certain topics, at least for a while. So let us filter our newsfeed to block content by certain keywords so that we don't have to be annoyed over and over again. The Facebook function to "hide a post" doesn't work because that only blocks topics from certain people. It does not block certain topics that are annoying. And sometimes people have bad memories - like maybe veterans have issues with PTSD and don't want to see posts about Iraq or Afghanistan until they get the help they need. Or maybe somebody went through a divorce and doesn't want to see anniversaries anymore. Please give us a negative keyword option. Just like previous request of automating post ads, Facebook could further give us functionality for ads by letting us segment our ads via hashtags or keywords for when we post on our page. For example, we make a prearranged ad set that targets a specific interest group, age group, or location demographic when our post includes words we tell it to. So if we make a post with the keyword "Tampa", we can pre-program our post to be shown to people who live in Tampa who like our brand. Or if we use the hashtag #Microsoft in our post, we can target Microsoft lovers with our latest Microsoft article. Whatever we want, we would have complete control. But it would give Facebook loads of money because it would be much more effective for the advertiser and for the viewer. And it would be automatic money for them. We would just be posting, with the ad sets ready to go if in fact we post something that fits our filter we have set up - more targeted visibility for us, more money for Facebook.
If Facebook implements these changes, and the changes I recommended in my last article, Facebook will be a better place.
Great post! I would never think about that improvements. I hope Zuckeberg listen you again. Greetings!
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