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Facebook Is Most Hated Social Media Company 165

Hugh Pickens writes "Inc. reports that Facebook, the most visited site on the Internet, is also among the most hated, scoring 64 on a 100-point scale, which puts the company in the bottom five percent of private sector companies and in the same range as airlines and cable companies, 'two perennially low-scoring industries with terrible customer satisfaction,' according to the results of a survey by the American Customer Satisfaction Index. 'Customers have shown that, so far, they have been willing to suffer through a poor user experience in order to enjoy the benefits Facebook provides,' according to the report. 'For companies that provide low levels of customer satisfaction, repeat business is always a challenge unless customers lack adequate choices, as in the case of near monopolies.' Overall, social media is one of the lowest-scoring industries measured by the ACSI — only airlines, newspapers, and subscription television services score lower. However, among social media companies, Wikipedia tops the list with a score of 77."
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Facebook Is Most Hated Social Media Company

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  • Opportunity is knocking for someone.

    • Re:Opportunity (Score:5, Informative)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Friday July 22, 2011 @07:17AM (#36844228) Homepage Journal

      Pretty sure Google has answered the door, and is now providing opportunity counseling services to recover from the time it spent with Facebook.

      • Not only that, it is also providing service to people who in past refused to use facebook.

        • by sycodon ( 149926 )

          I have to say I have found the Facebook GUI to be decidedly schizophrenic. Or, maybe it's the content.

          • Facebook keeps making changes to the UI and telling people "you'll get over it where else are you going to go". Except now there is an alternative.

            relevant web comic [wordpress.com].

            I'm "the" photographer for my family, friends, and team. I posted a status a few days ago that more or less said "All new family and rugby game photos will no longer be posted to Facebook. Send me your gmail or google account if you want an invite to Google+".

            All it takes is a few big movers and the ball will start rolling itself.

            • by Machtyn ( 759119 )
              Apparently, all Gmail users [talkandroid.com] are now able to use Google+. They'll need to activate that service, though.
            • Send me your gmail or google account if you want an invite to Google+

              So far as I know, you don't need a GMail account to be able to get invited to G+. You don't need a Google account, either, I believe - it should prompt you to create it (as part of profile creation) if you follow the invite.

      • "Google was at the top of the search portals and the search engines industry with a score of 80 out of 100, although that is down from 86 last year."

      • And it looks like Google is in turn inviting a whole heap of future troubles to its own doorstep.

    • by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *

      Yeah, now is the time for a MySpace comeback! Only 5 people reported hating them. Unfortunately, that's over half of their existing customer base. But still.

    • by Jawnn ( 445279 )

      Opportunity is knocking for someone.

      Well..., maybe, but the fact that there are so many people willing to bend over and take it, when it comes to Facebook's "privacy" policy, just so that they can share pictures of their trip to Cancun with all their "friends", leads me to believe that the masses don't much care about their chastity...er... privacy. Thus limiting the appeal of a competitor who might truly offer and honor a meaningful privacy policy.

  • It is the biggest, most well known and therefore more people hate it.
    • From the article (I know, bad form) both this headline and the article headline are wrong. Myspace is the 'most hated' being one point below Facebook. Rather interesting how close the two are, though.

    • For example, in the Internet Search segment, Google has a better ranking than Bing even though Google is more well known than Bing.

      • by Chrisq ( 894406 )

        For example, in the Internet Search segment, Google has a better ranking than Bing even though Google is more well known than Bing.

        Not a hard and fast rule, but Bing is part of Microsoft. I doubt if so many people would hate it if it were independent

        • i don't hate bing because it's microsoft, I hate it because every time I've used it I've been underwhelmed by the results.

          • by genner ( 694963 )

            i don't hate bing because it's microsoft, I hate it because every time I've used it I've been underwhelmed by the results.

            So am I .......of course the results are from Microsoft too.

    • by drb226 ( 1938360 )

      It is the biggest, most well known and therefore more people hate it.

      Not unlike "enterprisey" programming languages. It's hard to hate something you don't know about. It is easy to hate something that has become the de facto standard despite having flaws like everything else.

  • by alen ( 225700 ) on Friday July 22, 2011 @07:19AM (#36844234)

    they need to get zynga on board to port their games to G+ and that's close to 100 million users easy

    • by Riceballsan ( 816702 ) on Friday July 22, 2011 @07:24AM (#36844272)
      I somewhat doubt it, more like a very quick route to match facebooks I hate it but must use it, status.
    • by AngryDeuce ( 2205124 ) on Friday July 22, 2011 @07:34AM (#36844340)

      Most people on G+ (at least, most people that I come in contact with in my extended circles) assert they came to G+ to get away from the games and BS that's all over Facebook. I have a feeling if G+ tries to emulate Facebook completely in that department they're going to see people leave, whether it's blockable or not.

      In my own experience, blocking the games did no good, as people just started posting directly to my wall directly about the games and harassing me to play so they could get the "X number of friends required to get the golden tractor" or whatever stupid bullshit.

      • by Tridus ( 79566 )

        That's when you block the person instead.

        The problem with Facebook is that it's full of narcissistic bullshit like that, and people being emo because they want attention. I only had an account at all so people would stop bothering me to make one, and thanks to G+ I don't use it anymore.

        Thank god. An hour on facebook will make you hate humanity.

        • I only had an account at all so people would stop bothering me to make one, and thanks to G+ I don't use it anymore.

          Yeah, that's pretty much the only reason I created one, too...I got tired of being harassed to get on FB and finally relented and it was pretty much retarded from day one. So far G+ is a lot less retarded (which I think has much more to do with the fact that all those people are on FB then anything inherently "better" about G+) so I'm torn...I know they're going to have to pick up more people if they're going to survive, but if they pick up more people I'll likely be out of there. Either that or I'm gonna

          • As Google+ gets more popular, the stream will grow more and more inane. But, what's awesome, is G+ doesn't call people in your circles 'friends' so there isn't the emotional baggage associated with not being someone's friend. Moreover, you don't advertise your circles. You could add someone and then drop them and they would only see that you've added them. Moreover, they can add you without you adding them.

            Those attributes will go a long way towards keeping my stream of a higher quality than is possible on

            • As Google+ gets more popular, the stream will grow more and more inane. But, what's awesome, is G+ doesn't call people in your circles 'friends' so there isn't the emotional baggage associated with not being someone's friend. Moreover, you don't advertise your circles. You could add someone and then drop them and they would only see that you've added them. Moreover, they can add you without you adding them.

              If you have someone in your circle and that person goes on your profile, it will tell them "X has you in one of their circles" or something like that. So if you add them then drop them, they will get a notification, but if they then go onto your profile after, they may be able to tell that you no longer have them in a circle. I don't know if this is stil true if you hide your circle information entirely though (there seems to be two options - either display a list of everyone in your circles, without saying

              • If you have someone in your circle and that person goes on your profile, it will tell them "X has you in one of their circles" or something like that. So if you add them then drop them, they will get a notification, but if they then go onto your profile after, they may be able to tell that you no longer have them in a circle. I don't know if this is stil true if you hide your circle information entirely though (there seems to be two options - either display a list of everyone in your circles, without saying who is in what circle or what circles you have - or not display who you have in any circle)

                I don't think it notifies if a person is removed from a circle (I haven't actually had to remove anyone yet) but there is a notification when you add that person to a circle. It doesn't tell them what circle though, so they may think you dropped them in "friends" when in reality you dropped them in "Stupid people I wish would just shut the fuck up". The only way they could infer what circle they're in is by who else is in that circle with them, but I have mine set so that everyone can only see my "Followi

            • As Google+ gets more popular, the stream will grow more and more inane.

              See, but the lack of games makes that process go much slower than it could be otherwise.

        • by IANAAC ( 692242 )

          The problem with Facebook is that it's full of narcissistic bullshit like that, and people being emo because they want attention.

          I'm finding just as much narcissism on G+ as I ever found on FB. The difference is it's a geekier kind of narcissism: "WOW! Analytics is showing I got 20K views on my blog this week! Analytics rocks!"

          Maybe that'll soften as the demographics change, but there's just as much "look at me!" on G+ as there is on FB.

          • by Rich0 ( 548339 )

            Yup, my problem with G+ is that too many people make EVERYTHING public. If I know somebody from some FOSS project, chances are I'm really interested in their latest hack to get apache running on their postfix printer, and less interested in what they're listening to on the radio right now. I'm fine with the occasional human-interest post and make them myself, but there are some people I'm fairly likely to de-follow at the rate things are going.

            Share pictures of the kids with family, and share pictures of

        • The problem with Facebook is that it's full of narcissistic bullshit like that, and people being emo because they want attention

          So basically Facebook has finally absorbed the rest of the MySpace users. Back in the day Facebook was more or less like Google+ is now.

        • I only had an account at all so people would stop bothering me to make one, and thanks to G+ I don't use it anymore.

          This works best if Google+ flops. "Why, my retarded friend, I'd love to add you to my Facebook profile and see your inane drivel on my wall, but unfortunately I use Google+". I love how you don't even need a Google+ account.

      • There's a plug in called Better Facebook [betterfacebook.net] (i"m sure others) that lets you customize what you see. It lets you create filters, so you can filter out *farmville* *tractor*, etc.
      • Why not have a games tab? So users can interact with the games if they want, but you aren't spanned with the crap all the time.
      • by alen ( 225700 )

        that's why G+ will probably stay a niche

        between the gmail requirement and no social games most people will stay on facebook. the non-geeks don't care what robert scoble is posting daily.

        • It has been reported that Google is in fact preparing Google Games with some sort of integration into Google Plus, which will even go so far as to provide games that use Native Client. In the future, we could have full speed 3d farmville filling up our streams, but I'm very sure there will be an easy way to ignore it (just like there is with Facebook, actually).

      • by Ogive17 ( 691899 )
        Sounds like a good reason to not be friends with them, or to block that person individually.

        I started blocking certain games then I started hiding certain people that just spammed every facebook app ever invented. For a friends list of around 200 people, it's amazing how little clutter my feed actually has.

        I don't know many people on g+ yet, I have it but only have 4 friends. So far I don't think it's any easier to use than FB. But I'll wait and see how the end product turns out.
        • Facebook allows you to look at just one group as does Google with circles. Of course, G+ allows people do be in multiple circles, so you can keep people's viewing permissions organized into separate circles and also include a "People I Care About" that you use only for reading other people's posts. Helps clean up the stream even if you have a ton of friends on your list, without removing their ability to read and comment on what you have to say.

      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Most people on G+ (at least, most people that I come in contact with in my extended circles) assert they came to G+ to get away from the games and BS that's all over Facebook.

        I doubt that - you should ask if they still maintain a Facebook account or if they closed it down completely. Most probably still have it, if nothing more than "a friend is only on facebook" excuse.

        The reason G+ is growing is because it ISN'T facebook. Hating the popular thing is a well known behavior that's been around for centuries a

      • I figure the best way for Google to bring in the games factor is to start a new project along the lines of Google Games! and have it be a separate Google service that can be linked/rolled into your Google+ account in whichever manner you choose to configure it (kind of like how you can loosely link your YouTube account to your G+ account).

        That way if someone does not have a Google Games account, they don't/won't have to recieve any games updates/content from any of their friends that do have an account.
        • The service is coming, Slashgear has reported [slashgear.com] mention of a "Games Stream" in some Google Help docs (now removed), which hints that the games along with the spam will be available, but you'll be able to ignore it much more easily.

    • Zynga has its own problems - the Flash games become notoriously slower and unresponsive the higher you get in levels. Even the lab rats get tired of the Skinner box when it takes 5 minutes to drop a pellet. Ever get a Farmville farm up to level 50? It would literally take 20 seconds just to move your mouse accross the screen from one crop plot to another. If Google+ uses their mad HTML5 skillz to make Zynga-esque crack games that have better performance, I might consider playing them. If they bring Zyn
    • by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *

      Zynga and Facebook are very much in bed together (excellent recent article on the subject [businessinsider.com]). If Zynga were to go to a competitor, Facebook might start making their OWN games (something they've never done, since they've always worked so closely with Zynga).

    • No.

      Let Facebook have the games. I don't need an addiction-fueled social website. I am quite happy to spend the occasional 5-10 minutes, checking out what my scientist (and other) friends have to say or share. More time than that is just sick and honestly, I couldn't afford it (wife and kid eat lots of your free time).

  • Tell Mark Zuckerburg that he can get away with being an even bigger asshole. Thanks for that. This was a great idea.
  • Wikipedia? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PhilHibbs ( 4537 ) <snarks@gmail.com> on Friday July 22, 2011 @07:35AM (#36844346) Journal

    I'm surprised to see Wikipedia listed as "social media".

    • Yeah, even though they're both sources of collaboration for content, I think there's a difference between an online encyclopedia and an online message board, which is pretty much all Facebook is.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Frankly, the discouragement of user-to-user communication is for the best. All my problems with Wikipedia have involved other users!
    • It shouldn't be but that doesn't stop wankers like Orangemike [wikipedia.org] or Chaos5023 [wikipedia.org] (accounts were pulled randomly from the edit history of the first wiki page I clicked on) from turning it into some networking dedication page to themselves.

      • by Rich0 ( 548339 )

        Wow - I really loved the one award Orange Mike got: "For almost being as fast at deleting as I am at taggin!"

        Pretty-much sums up what is wrong with WP:LETSBEPEDANTIC.

    • I'm surprised to see Wikipedia listed as "social media".

      They might be confused with anti-social media. Try adding an edit to a page with a neurotic editor who doesn't share your world view, facts being irrelevant to his agenda.

  • by Tomahawk ( 1343 ) on Friday July 22, 2011 @07:36AM (#36844350) Homepage

    How something if phrased is very important.

    Given 64/100 for Facebook, and 77/100 for Wikipedia, how, exactly, do you define 'hate' and 'like'?

    Facebook gets a lower score, but how does this equate to 'hate'?

    Certainly, Facebook is liked a lot less than wikipedia. I don't like facebook (I closed my account there a long long time ago), but I don't 'hate' it.
    (I also don't trust it, but that's another issue entirely)

    • by fedos ( 150319 ) <allen.bouchardNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday July 22, 2011 @07:48AM (#36844476) Homepage
      Since it scores in the same range as airlines and subscription television, two services that people regularly say they "hate", I think one can easily move to applying the word "hate" to FB.
    • by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Friday July 22, 2011 @08:29AM (#36844838) Journal
      It's probably done in the same sort of skewed survey favoured by market research. I did some a few years ago where I gave feedback on adverts. They were universally bad, so I gave them all poor scores, but they asked us to rate them on a scale of -5 to 5. Most of the people they asked seemed to have difficulty with the concept of negative numbers, so they rated ones they thought were really bad around 1-2, and ones they really liked 4-5. No doubt that when they presented these numbers to their customer they moved them to a 0-10 scale, so people giving a score if 2 were really giving a score of 7.
  • Haters!

  • Why use it if you don't like it? There are other means for communication, it's not like they have a monopoly...
    • Why use it if you don't like it?

      Daily affirmation: People are lazy and stupid. They will fritter away the last moments of their unfulfilled lives complaining about something they chose to use rather than change.

  • Customers have shown that, so far, they have been willing to suffer through a poor user experience in order to enjoy the benefits Facebook provides

    What you talkin' 'bout Willis? Facebooks customers are the advertisers and corporate partners. Oh, you mean the "users". The users are Facebook's *product*, not its customers.

  • 'Customers have shown that, so far, they have been willing to suffer through a poor user experience in order to enjoy the benefits Facebook provides'

    What customers, it's a free service, paid for through advertising !!!!

    • Well, the sentence actually does make sense if you parse it in English, although I don't think it's what they meant to say.

      Advertisers have shown that, so far, they have been willing to shit on users in order to enjoy the benefit of being able to show them ads.

      See? It works fine.

      For the English-impaired; The advertisers are the customers, they're bringing their custom to facebook. Users are the product. The same is true of Google+ of course, but the difference is that Google tends to be gentle about selling

      • by npsimons ( 32752 ) *

        For the English-impaired; The advertisers are the customers, they're bringing their custom to facebook. Users are the product. The same is true of Google+ of course, but the difference is that Google tends to be gentle about selling you where FB is ruthless.

        "Google, the compassionate pimp" doesn't quite have the same ring to it as "don't be evil". Course, I'd still rank Google as probably the most ethical (big) company out there. Sad. I really hope they find a way to transition to making money from somethin

  • I would switch, but for some reason G+ won't let me have a non-public Google account profile setting or a limited version where only friends of my friends (like on facebook) can find me on a search.

    • You can have a profile where only your name is visible to the public, you can fine-tune every other aspect as to who can see it.
      • As I said, I don't want anything public -- which includes my name and gender. I don't understand why this is so difficult to provide? Even FACEBOOK allows this for users and Facebook sucks at privacy.

        • Fair enough if you don't want that public, although given all anyone could gain from that is that you have a google plus account, I don't see it's a problem - and why would google provide that? They want people to be public, that's the point of the service.
          • Some of us maintain a separation of professional from personal life via the use of separate email accounts etc. LinkedIn and Facebook makes this easy to maintain. For example, being public on facebook means professional colleagues would know of that account and attempt to connect there which makes for awkward rejects of "friend requests." Yes, I could play with various circle settings, but that means a chance I make a mistake at one point in posting and that's not worth the risk.

            The non-tech people actual

            • You say you could make a mistake - only as easily as you could with any other account. There is a reason those circle setting exist, they allow you to do what you want in an easier way.
              • At the end of the day, Google wants people to use it's service. Rationalizing that users could do x or y to make it acceptable, or to mitigate a stupid circle mistake doesn't change the fact that to some of us we don't want the headache. Facebook + LinkedIn work better for me under the current privacy designs of each service. Google's doesn't. Whether or not anyone at Google understands doesn't matter as it's what I (and many other non "silicon valley" professional types) want. Once google gets a large nu

            • "Some of us maintain a separation of professional from personal life"

              Well then your semi-public G+ account is in the name "Joe J. Blow." They aren't checking credentials.

        • Your gender complaint has been addressed. [youtube.com]
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by Arctech ( 538041 )
      At the very least a user is a client of the service, however from Facebook's POV they may as well be a customer. Every head that logs in to their site produces ad revenue, fairly efficiently targeted ad revenue if the person has bothered to enter in any amount of "likes" for various interests. Facebook's purchased currency, "points", is gravy by comparison.
    • by gsslay ( 807818 )

      Mod parent up.

      Facebook users are not Facebook's customers. Facebook's customers are their advertisers. Their users is what Facebook is selling.

      If more Facebook users were clear on this they'd be less likely to gift their information to them, and more aware of exactly where Facebook's loyalties lie.

  • To put it in Facebook's terminology.
  • by FunkyELF ( 609131 ) on Friday July 22, 2011 @08:08AM (#36844644)

    .... WTF... you waited for G+ to come out... now you might as well give up.

    • by Isarian ( 929683 )

      .... WTF... you waited for G+ to come out... now you might as well give up.

      Good to know their 200K cash infusion from Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-personally-controlled-do-it-all-distr) went somewhere useful!

    • by The O Rly Factor ( 1977536 ) on Friday July 22, 2011 @09:29AM (#36845622)
      Can we stop with the Diaspora nonsense already? It was vaporware pure and simple, and a bunch of really dumb investors got trolled out of a couple hundred thousand dollars. It wasn't even that nice, you needed a fuckton of gem dependencies just to get it to kinda sorta function, and it won't even run on Apache.

      It'll come out on the same day that Microsoft finally releases a good version of Microsoft Bob.
  • I'm certain I'm not the only one wondering this, but I honestly am curious as to how many people loathe Facebook (and other ilk of its kind) simply based on the fact that for reasons unknown, they don't allow a delete button within certain functions.

    And yes, I'm well aware that many other options are available to mirror/archive/preserve any content that hits the 'net, but it's the sheer principle behind the whole Borg mentality that social media loves to embrace that tends to piss people off too.

  • People only hate businesses when they are stuck using them...no other choice. Facebook is hated, because until recently they had no competition. Hopefully competition will force Facebook to improve its policies, software and its regard for its users.

    People also hate Facebook and social networks, in general ( none others are as successful as Facebook to be worth hating ) because of the price they are paying: their information, and their dignity in being able to control their information.

    People look the

    • Easy solution, stop putting anything up of consequence on Facebook. That's what I did, problem solved. It's now just a glorified email box for me to deal with people that prefer communicating over facebook

      • That is my policy now too.

        However, my Facebook friends are slow to follow me over to G+, despite hating Facebook.

        It is human nature to see the familiar as safe and the new as risky, despite knowing how crappy the familiar is.

        My friends are turned off by G+ copyrighting their pictures and are scared of their privacy. Google needs to do more to reassure people that they aren't going to "Facebook them"

  • I'll stick with my 20 year old social networking engine, if you don't mind.

    telnet://muon.mono.org [mono.org]

  • Funny...they're also by far the most popular social media company. That couldn't have anything to do with it im sure.
  • I suppose Oracle, and Microsoft, prove that. I'll bet there are a lot hated businesses that are amazingly successful. Murdoch is probably doing okay, I wonder how BP execs are doing? How about Goldman Sach execs?

  • ... Slashdot is populated by geeks, story at 11.

    Thank you captain obvious and your team of common sense avengers.

  • Social media is an inherently annoying service. Facebook is the largest social network out there, thus it has more people hating it the same way more Americans hate the IRS than the Polish Ministry of Finance.
  • There are very legitimate reasons to dislike Facebook. The privacy issue, social game overload and crap UI changes to name a few. However, I fairly certain that the current antipathy towards Facebook amongst your average individual is motivated by little more than fad-fueled, herd-driven mentality. How many people truly know or care about privacy? I'd argue not many given how freely they share personal information. And for anyone who's just a little more savvy they'll know how to mitigate some of those prob

  • They are preying on the Human psyche's insane need for a group hug.

    They are hated because they are profiting on that.

  • I'll bet if they polled people they would also say they hate email, probably even more than facebook. Email sucks--its impersonal and most people don't have the level of skill to use it effectively (i.e. reading, writing and typing), but they do anyways and doing so inflict their ignorance on the world.

    Email sucks, so does facebook. Google sucks too, the web is full of useless spam and so are their search results. In fact computers basically just suck in general and have a huge potential for improvement

  • From the first link [inc.com]:

    Google [had] a score of 80 out of 100, although that is down from 86 last year. Microsoft’s Bing search engine "makes a strong first showing with a score of 77," according to the report. It was followed by Yahoo (76), AOL (74), and Ask.com (73).

    These don't match the press release from the second link at all:

    All major competitors improve, with Google in the lead, jumping 4% to 83. While Google remains below its all-time high of 86 from 2008 and 2009, its present score is the highest among all e-business websites. One year ago, Google plunged 7% in ACSI, but the company now appears to have a better handle on its expanding range of Internet services. Microsoft’s search engine Bing, however, is close behind Google with a score of 82 following its 7% surge.

    Surpassing even Bing’s sharp upswing, the 10% gain posted by Ask.com is the largest in e-business. With an ACSI score of 80, Ask.com is chased closely by Yahoo! and MSN—both showing sizeable ACSI advances of 4% to 79 and 78, respectively. Unlike other search engines and portals, Ask.com offers a question-and-answer format that garners a smaller, but increasingly loyal, following. As Ask.com, Yahoo!, and MSN rise, AOL is left behind, gaining a mere 1% to an ACSI score of 75.

    Perhaps they used numbers from a year or two ago for the Inc.com article. In any case, is there, somewhere, a discussion of the methodology used and a summary of results that's not spoon fed to the press? These are almost arbitrary numbers to me, with a surprisingly small spread: 66% to 83% is the range from very low satisfaction to very high, out of 100%?

Statistics are no substitute for judgement. -- Henry Clay

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