Dave Winer wrote: Why Facebook Sucks.
Can’t say I disagree.
I think it sucks because it isn’t scalable and falls apart at 5,000 contacts. It pisses me off more and more every day because of that scaling wall.
Damn I wish I hadn’t locked my rolodex in this trunk.
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Robert Scoble works at Fast Company.TV (title: Managing Director). Everything here, though, is his personal opinion and is not read or approved before it is posted. No warranties or other guarantees will be offered as to the quality of the opinions or anything else offered here.
rscoble@fastcompany.com
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October 14th, 2007 at 6:35 am
Ah, the old vaudeville joke: “The food is terrible. And the portions are so small!”
October 14th, 2007 at 6:57 am
Why isn’t there an “export” facebook app? Is it possible to write something that reads all contact data from your contacts and writes it somewhere else?
October 14th, 2007 at 7:04 am
***LOOKING FOR A FACEBOOK DEVELOPER***
I think those of us that were fortunate enough to have connected with Scoble and become “friends” with him on Facebook owe ourselves the recognition.
As such, I’m looking for a Facebook developer that can dedicate a couple hours to make a quick application that will put an icon on someone’s profile stating they are part of the “Scoble 5000″.
***If interested, leave your contact information here and we’ll move forward!****
October 14th, 2007 at 7:15 am
Haha, so you admited that you’re using Facebook as a Rolodex…
If you’re following Google and the next social networking, you should know that the current version of Orkut has a limit of 1000 “friends”. I don’t know if they are gonna upgrade this limit, so consider advised.
October 14th, 2007 at 7:28 am
Ok, Scoble… we get it! Facebook doesn’t let you add more than 5000 contacts. How many more blog posts must be dedicated to this fact?
October 14th, 2007 at 7:41 am
Hmm… Robert, you saying that Facebook sucks because it limits you to 5K contacts is like me saying that Aston Martins suck because I want one but can’t afford it.
I don’t even see why you’d want to have 5000 contacts or more anyway: if you added them to see what they’re up to, you’ll never have time to keep up; if you added them to let them know what you’re up to, you might as well have your own website which will easily scale to millions if needed… Oh, you already do!
October 14th, 2007 at 8:26 am
I’m wondering how biased your view on FaceBook is because you’re not your everyday user. Although I would agree that FB should be scalable (in an ‘Uh, I guess’ sort of way), is it really that much of a problem? I would suspect that it’s not much of a deal to everyone save a few high profile bloggers who seem to have thousands of relationships to other individuals.
October 14th, 2007 at 8:27 am
That would be relationships *with*, sorry about that ;-)
October 14th, 2007 at 9:12 am
@Jaap
There are also some very low profile bloggers who have tens of thousands of relationships to other individuals.
I am still wondering why Gmail limits my contacts to 10,000 addresses.
October 14th, 2007 at 9:15 am
@Jaap
Actually, not understanding the difference between:
“relationships to …”
and
“relationships with …”
may be exactly why some people don’t understand the problem of these limits on connectivity.
October 14th, 2007 at 9:19 am
delete people you dont really know. Dont hype up facebook to everyone then 3 weeks later say it sucks. If you have 100-200 , 500 contacts, it works just fine.
October 14th, 2007 at 9:24 am
@Steve
I only keep people who I have had a conversation (in person or online) within the last year or two in my Address Book.
There are over 11,000 people in there.
October 14th, 2007 at 9:42 am
[...] According to Robert Scoble Facebook sucks because it, “falls apart at 5,000 contacts.” [...]
October 14th, 2007 at 9:49 am
[...] you-don’t-need-more-friends lobby If you read my comments on the last post you’ll see the “Scoble-you-don’t-need-more-friends” [...]
October 14th, 2007 at 9:54 am
http://www.fsbsoftware.com/
10 second search found that, your Rolodex is free.
October 14th, 2007 at 9:54 am
“I am still wondering why Gmail limits my contacts to 10,000 addresses.”
Because having limits allows them to plan, and 10,000 is certainly a reasonable limit for contacts.
October 14th, 2007 at 10:03 am
Tim: it’s NOT a reasonable limit. I know businesses with hundreds of thousands of contacts. Chris Pirillo has that many too for his email newsletters.
Buzz Bruggeman has 12,000 in Outlook. Yet another example of how Google isn’t ready for Enterprise users.
October 14th, 2007 at 10:32 am
There are a few of us out there who don’t use facebook or any other closed social network, and object to our “friends” who give our email addresses to facebook. There are other people who prefer the other closed social networks such as Orkut, 360, myspace, friendster, linkedin, etc. Ihe list seems to expand every year in response to the whims of the online community, so why would you tie your rolodex to a technology that will probably be deprecated in a few years?
October 14th, 2007 at 10:52 am
I noticed the other day that half of my newsfeed were ads for various apps that pulled names out of my friend’s list to act like they’d done something that I should respond to.
Visions of Fonzie on waterskis came to mind…
October 14th, 2007 at 10:57 am
Dave really nailed it on this one. I recently wrote about the core notion here — that social network “friends lists” are really address book 2.0 — and that it is really important that we establish now that you own your address book, not Facebook or any other corporation! My post on the topic here: http://therealmccrea.wordpress.com/2007/10/04/friends-list-address-book-20/
October 14th, 2007 at 11:17 am
Re: “you own your address book”. You don’t own the data, once you give it to Facebook to keep on their servers. Why this expectation that they shouldn’t do what you agreed to in the terms of service? If you don’t like it, then don’t use Facebook to publish your information. But complaining that it doesn’t work well, for uses they did not intend, won’t get you any sympathy.
Re: “5000 isn’t enough”. The solution to this is real simple: unfriend the vast majority of “friends” with whom you have no relationship, keeping the ones you actually value. I would imagine every “celebrity” finds they have to do this. To everyone else, publish in a channel that was meant for the traffic.
October 14th, 2007 at 11:55 am
[...] original post and Scoble’s commentary on it! [...]
October 14th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Brad’s Thoughts on the Social Graph was about fixing this class of problem - you may remember deep and meaningful discussion on Techmeme about the use of the word “graph”…
You should be able to get your data out though - there’s the Facebook Foaf Generator (you’ll probably need to clean up the XML a little, it looks like it doesn’t escape ampersands in content).
October 14th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
[...] on the heels of Dave’s post of course came Robert Scoble bemoaning the fact that he’s not allowed anymore than 5,000 friends in Facebook equating it to locking [...]
October 14th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
I think the point here is that FB, by limiting contacts to 5k, is limiting the type of social networking tool / site it means to be. Probably a mistake on their part I’d have thought - the more freedom people are given the better they like things.
October 14th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
@Robert: Why is 10,000 contact on Gmail a limit? You mention businesses with hundreds of thousands of contacts as a reason why, but how many businesses use Gmail as their corporate email?
October 14th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Why would a co-author of “A Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web” have to wait for Dave Winer to do a blog post to know that Facebook is a fairly closed system? (Not to mention a big waist of time for anyone who would rather communicate with their friends than “poke” them)?
October 14th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
The 5,000 friend limit may suck for you, but how many other people are bumping against that limit? If that’s your primary reason for saying that Facebook sucks, then I think that you are not accurately reflecting the way most people are using Facebook. Granted, we may all want to have 5,000+ friends at some point in the future, but as of today, I don’t think that’s an issue for very many people. If it were, I think the folks there would be making it more of a priority to resolve. I’ve been a reader of your blog for a long time and I’m kinda tired of your harping on this one issue about Facebook as it is not (currently) a drawback for the vast majority of its users - mostly you.
October 14th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Mac Beach: it’s not the first time I’ve written about this issue. Thanks for reading.
October 14th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
Robert: Facebook is intended for real people. “Robert Scoble” isn’t a real person anymore… he’s a public identity. Similarly, a business isn’t a real person… it may be an entity for tax purposes, but it ain’t a person.
For that sorta thing, you want MySpace. It happily embraces the notion of “people-as-marketing-tools”, and as Tila Tequila can attest, you can have way, way more than 5,000 friends.
October 14th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
@address book discussion - yes the API is there to pull your profile. I guess no one has done it because Facebook devs don’t want you to leave Facebook?
I love the way people take a free personal service and say it doesn’t scale to business/enterprise proportions. It’s no more Facebook’s fault for not monetising their community ‘properly’ than it is Scoble’s fault for not monetising his database. And seriously, anyone who wants enterprise services (5000 plus) should pay enterprise rates for enterprise scaleability. ie. you get what you pay for, the new economy notwithstanding.
October 14th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
[...] Scoble wants to have more than 5,000 friends: I think it sucks because it isn’t scalable and falls apart at 5,000 contacts. It pisses me off more and more every day because of that scaling [...]
October 14th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Do you ever disagree with Winer? :) I guess you don’t want him on your bad side or he’ll turn on you faster than Dr Jekyll.
October 14th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
So Facebook is now not the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, as you had been preaching for the last few months? ;)
Your famed edge-case temper-tantrums not working? Wait til Ballmer gets a piece, then you can complain to Microsoft.
October 14th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
“it’s NOT a reasonable limit. I know businesses with hundreds of thousands of contacts. Chris Pirillo has that many too for his email newsletters.”
Yes, it IS a reasonable limit. Who the hell needs to have all the people they send an email newsletter to in their address book? You generally have specialised software to send emails like that. Do people really administer lists like that using the GMail interface?
Let me put it another way:
Let X be the number of people who could use GMail. Let Y be the number of people who ‘need’ more than 10,000 people in their contacts list.
So the proportion of users this limit matters to is Z = Y/X.
I’m guessing Z tends to zero. Or, in fact, is zero for all intents and purposes.
You need to realise that “me, and a couple of other guys I know, and that’s totally just off the top of my head!” is an edge case, and is unlikely to be addressed any time soon. It’s why having 5000+ friends in Facebook isn’t sensible either. It isn’t what it is designed to do.
In other words, “reasonable limit” means “for the vast majority of people”, not “good enough for ME”.
October 14th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Can I say, told ya so?
Mind you I only have about 1500 contacts, not friends, in Outlook, so 5000 wouldn’t be a problem. It’s the “walled garden” aspect that ruled it out for me.
October 15th, 2007 at 5:39 am
@satish:
Why not just create a Facebook group?
October 15th, 2007 at 6:08 am
@Robin Capper: totally agreed. That’s the big kicker for me.
I’m also rapidly approaching the 5k limit (at 4384 now) and will soon find it as frustrating as Scoble.
October 15th, 2007 at 7:28 am
the talk of fb being address book 2.0 is interesting - my company (Jangl) actually built an app inside fb called “Phonebook”. Check it out, it provides you an at-a-glance view of all your friends, a phone number for them (a virtual one that is), and other call control settings. No comment on the 5K limit - I don’t have that many “friends”, for better or worse
October 15th, 2007 at 8:49 am
THE GREAT AND POWERFUL DAVE WINER SPEAKS! The Tuesday Night Tech Show loves you Scoble!
October 15th, 2007 at 9:33 am
[...] (not so long ago) big time Facebook fan Robert Scoble is now questioning his decision to personally invest in Facebook, big time: Facebook sucks? [...]
October 15th, 2007 at 11:44 am
[...] Over the weekend Scoble wrote another post explaining why the 5,000 friends limit is ridiculous, and I happen to agree with him. More relevantly, he also says: [...]
October 15th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
>Chris Pirillo has that many too for his
>email newsletters.
I used to have about 2 million people on my e-mail newsletter lists before Yahoo decided to turn them all over to that hacker in Poland.
October 15th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
@Satish: if you’re serious about that Facebook developer thing, we’d be willing to take it on :-).
And @Scobleizer: what did you expect when you started friending everyone regardless of whether or not they’re your real-life friend? That said, I agree that the 5,000 friend limit sucks. Would you pay for more capacity?
October 15th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
@Everyone who things that 5k FB friends and 10k Gmail contacts is unreasonable: Must I remind you that you are using a “free” (as in beer) service that you signed/clicked-yes-to an EULA with? If the product that you have not made any investment in is not good enough for you, get another!
FB calls them “friends” for a reason, and I am pretty confident that you do not have 5000 actual friends. If you are only using FB/Gmail as a distribution list for newsletters, etc, and it’s not good enough for you, purchase a specialized program that will manage that many contacts for you with no limit. Or, as mentioned above, just start a group and accomplish the same things. I’m sure you would have no problem getting all 5000 of your “friends” to join up.
October 16th, 2007 at 5:58 am
[...] Dave Winer wrote: Why Facebook Sucks . Can’t say I disagree. I think it sucks because it isn’t scalable and falls apart at 5,000 contacts. It pisses me off more and more every day because of that scaling wall. … [...]
October 16th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
[...] 16th, 2007 | Internet In two recent posts (Facebook sucks, The you-don’t-need-more-friends lobby, Robert Scoble has complained about the 5000-friend limit [...]
October 17th, 2007 at 4:24 am
[...] now realized that it really wasn’t me, it was the 5000 friends limit in facebook. So I am still [...]
October 18th, 2007 at 6:02 am
[...] Comment on Facebook Sucks, Dave Winer says by Iguazu-Falls » Blog …Dave Winer wrote: Why Facebook Sucks . Can’t say I disagree. I think it sucks because it isn’t scalable and falls apart at 5000 contacts. It pisses me off more and more every day because of that scaling wall. … […] [...]
October 18th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
webswarms will never limit the number of Others you may be in contact with
October 19th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
[...] What’s the social networking phenomena all about? Is it a way to easily communicate with a variety of friends/people? Or is simply about being popular/well known - however you want to define popular: e.g. My name is Robert Scoble and I have 5,000 Facebook friends. [...]
October 21st, 2007 at 1:33 am
I am a MySpace man, not a facebook fan.
October 22nd, 2007 at 9:03 am
[...] Dave Winer wrote: Why Facebook Sucks . Can’t say I disagree. I think it sucks because it isn’t scalable and falls apart at 5,000 contacts. It pisses me off more and more every day because of that scaling wall. … [...]
October 22nd, 2007 at 2:17 pm
In addition to the problems cited by Winer and the others in these comments, Facebook is rather unfriendly to those of us who are older. I noted this when I went to look for friends in the college list and the dropdown graduation date menu only went back to 1970. Not much help to someone who graduated from college in 1963. Fortunately for us older types, saggingfacebook.com looks ready to fill the void.
October 23rd, 2007 at 3:16 am
[...] Comment on Facebook Sucks, Dave Winer says by Argentina » Blog …Comment on Facebook Sucks, Dave Winer says by Iguazu-Falls » Blog …Dave Winer wrote: Why Facebook Sucks . Can’t say I disagree. I think it sucks because it isn’t scalable and falls apart at 5000 contacts. It pisses me off more and more … Posted in Argentina | Trackback | del.icio.us | Top Of Page [...]
October 25th, 2007 at 5:43 am
[...] Dave Winer wrote: Why Facebook Sucks . Can’t say I disagree. I think it sucks because it isn’t scalable and falls apart at 5,000 contacts. It pisses me off more and more every day because of that scaling wall. … [...]
October 25th, 2007 at 7:54 am
[...] Dave Winer wrote: Why Facebook Sucks . Can’t say I disagree. I think it sucks because it isn’t scalable and falls apart at 5,000 contacts. It pisses me off more and more every day because of that scaling wall. … [...]
October 28th, 2007 at 1:52 am
[...] wrote an interesting post today on Comment on Facebook Sucks, Dave Winer says by Iguazu-Falls » Blog …Here’s a quick [...]
October 30th, 2007 at 8:58 am
[...] they’ll eventually launch an affordable freemium service that will allow the Tila Tequilas (and Robert Scobles!) of the world to have unlimited friends, special profiles, and access to premium content-sharing [...]
November 1st, 2007 at 3:43 pm
[...] Facebook wasn’t built for people like Tris. (Sorry buddy, but it’s true.) It was built for people like me who can’t resist sucking all of our content into one central location and updating it constantly with new information, and then spitting that content out to our friends. Robert Scoble is like that too, except he’s too popular. [...]
November 6th, 2007 at 12:32 am
[...] Want 5001 friends? No problem. [...]
November 18th, 2007 at 2:35 am
i am proud to be counted in the number of Scoble friends on Facebook and agree with his comments. Scoble is REAL PEOPLE and speaks his mind rather than kissing up to the establishment. we are lucky to have him as a spokesman for those of us without a voice. thank you Scoble for keeping it real.
November 28th, 2007 at 9:30 am
[...] that also included a new high in popularity. Soon readers were treated with comments about how he couldn’t have more than 5000 friends, nor could he believe that several friends had dropped him. Then there were incredibly excited [...]
January 11th, 2008 at 11:05 am
[...] think it sucks because it isn’t scalable and falls apart at 5,000 contacts. It pisses me off more and more every day because of that scaling [...]
February 27th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
[...] lot of people just accepting any and all friend requests that come their way. Not everyone can be a Robert Scoble who becomes unhappy when a social network like Facebook caps his friendship list at 5,…. That doesn’t stop a lot of folks though and then we wonder why we start seeing posts about [...]
May 9th, 2008 at 9:31 am
[...] There are stories around why the limitation exists at all. The official reason is that Facebook wants to make sure that people only add “real” friends to their account, and the restriction is on the high end of the number of friends that any one person could reasonable have. The unofficial (and actual) reason: scaling problems made this necessary. I’ve heard this directly from Facebook employees, as have others. [...]
May 9th, 2008 at 10:54 am
[...] There are stories around why the limitation exists at all. The official reason is that Facebook wants to make sure that people only add “real” friends to their account, and the restriction is on the high end of the number of friends that any one person could reasonable have. The unofficial (and actual) reason: scaling problems made this necessary. I’ve heard this directly from Facebook employees, as have others. [...]