Facebook Chat Pulls a Fast One

There's always things in your life that you depend on greatly. Be it your morning coffee, talking to your best friend, or your daily fix of World of Warcraft. Well, for me, I very much reply on Facebook... No, I'm not addicted, why would you think that... Ok, maybe... a little, but that's beside the point. Myself, not having a cellphone, car, or even going to school, FB is one of the few ways I can keep in contact with my friends. For me personally, I found FB chat is extremely helpful. However, like all things that we deem important, FB, and FB chat more specifically, has failed myself and others; taking our once calm and complete lives, and throwing them into complete chaos... kinda.

If you're like me, you've noticed that the last couple of day FB chat has been acting screwy. For a while there, it wasn't even showing up. That was to say the least, very annoying, but I understood that sometimes things need to come down so maintenance can be done on them; therefore, there were no complaints from me. After all, I figured they were just making it better... right?

So, the next day I log onto FB, everything looks good... at first. My chats back up, I can see my friends online, it all good. There was no one to chat with at the moment, so I didn't notice any problems, life was good. Later that day, someone I want to talk to logs on. Yes! My life has purpose for the next ten minutes...

Anyway, I open up that chat window and notice somethings different. Wait, it's wider? Ok, whatever, it was fine the way it was, but I can live with that. I send the classic, "sup?" and now I notice a problem. Why exactly is my name replaced with my picture? I mean, yeah, it's a nice picture, but I'm not that conceded. The whole, "update," was starting to bother me now, but it was usable, so I lived with it.

Now, there was something that had been bothering me all day. I had a friend, one that I happened to want to talk to, that was posting things on FB, yet I couldn't see him online. I figured, this is some sort of fluke, it will be fixed by tomorrow. Well, it's tomorrow, and it's not fixed. This is annoying to say the least, but there's nothing I can do... except blog about it I suppose!

Of course, once I realized there was some major problem going on, I started researching it. Turns out, some features I didn't even notice disappeared. This didn't bother me, because I rarely to never use them, but it has bothered quite a large amount of people.

For example, there is no longer a Clear Chat History button. Many people that are extremely upset about this and refuse to even use FB until it is fixed. I can see why some people would do this. Some things people just don't want others to see, and they should be able to remove them if they desire to do so. I even read claims that it was against Canadian law, because FB does not let you remove the messages and does not tell you how long they will stay.

Many people are also complaining about the time stamps no longer being there. However, in FB's defense, they are still there, you just have to hover over the right side of the chat window to show them. However, this is kinda a useless feature, and makes it take longer than needed to see which time the last message was. The only possible purpose is to try to make it seem more, "Web 2.0," which frankly, most people don't want; just look at MySpace.

So, my opinion on this whole thing? Facebook needs to take a serious look at what their users want. Half of their recent updates have been hated by a huge portion of the FB community; that's no way to run a business; maybe a dictatorship, but last time I checked, when you run a business like a dictatorship, you tend to lose customers... They also need to make sure their, "updates," don't have major flaws in them. If somethings a bit off, ok, whatever. If I can't see my friend, that's a problem, and the update should never have even been released.

Basically, put our stuff back Facebook! If you think something needs to be changed, just ask us, we will more than gladly tell you what we want, and please, don't release buggy updates, it just ticks us off...

Do you agree or disagree with me? What do you think Facebook should do? Tell me below!