Why can’t you K.I.S.S about photos, Facebook?
To set the record straight, I am an Organization Freak. I can’t function when things are in a mess. My folders are organized in an easy and meticulous system just so that I never need to remember where the files are.
And so today, I’ll like to document and analyze some updates rolled out by Facebook over the years.
Ps: the sequence of updates might not be 100% accurate.
I used to like Facebook better when status updates are simply status updates (text), while photos are photos.
Phase 1: Uploading photos on FB used to be so much simpler.
You create album(s), dump relevant photos inside, and you’re done. People can Like your album(s), &/or Like each photo individually. It was elegant, it was simple. The way it was structured was direct — think of albums as events or simply folders: Bangkok 2011, Birthday 2012, New Year 2013, School Life 2012–2015, Art Portfolio, Nephew 1–5 years old, etc. You can keep adding photos to the same album and it’s perfectly fine. If you wanna tag a witty caption to that album, it goes to the album description. Everything is perfect, well-organized, easy to find, and life is awesome.
Then, FB introduced Mobile Uploads. [Phase 2]
So any photo that you uploaded using the phone goes into that Mobile Uploads album, by default. I remember there was also a period when uploads using Apple phones will go into an “iOS Uploads” album, or something like that? Oh gosh, but everyone changes their mobile brands every other year. I’d switched from Blackberry to Samsung to Sony to Apple, what gives? Enter my confusion simply because Organization Freak Can’t Function in Mess.
Afterwards, comes the Timeline uploads. [Phase 3]
With the introduction of your Wall aka Timeline(not sure which official name came first, now, if you upload one photo, it goes into this Timeline Photos folder. Which is actually ok, when the max you could upload at one time is one photo.
Boom comes the idea of modified “status updates”. [Phase 4]
Text updates will not do (maybe because Twitter has that). One photo as an update will not do.
Facebook decided to combine the original functions of status updates (text) TOGETHER WITH the uploading of photos. Which made the updating even more madness. You can type something witty, then upload 3 photos, and they become one POST. Which means, you can be having one outing, and have lots of fun spamming 3 or 10 posts throughout the day with various status updates + a few accompanying photos. An absolute nightmare when you have that person who’s travelling for the first time in years and is live-updating with every meal, every activity.
Sometimes the post’s photos goes into the Timeline album, sometimes the Mobile Uploads album. What no one told you is, the accompanying caption for the post disappears in that album (but it still exists on your Wall/Timeline)… so do the comments (but it still exists on your Wall/Timeline too). But the messiness! I can’t keep track of things anymore!
Hence, I would refrain from doing this kind of posts much because I know it would mess up my album-organizing.
Come to think of it, FB did accomplished the intention of making people post MORE and scroll through MORE as a viewer.
Recently, FB started to really define every update as Posts. [Phase 5]
I believe this has reached the definition of useless-updates-we-don’t-need.
Each time you add something, it counts as a Post. It is similar to Phase 4 as referenced above, except in a more hardcore manner. You could have one “My Pet Dog” album, and FB will track all the times you uploaded something inside as “posts”. People can also click Like on your posts of that dog album for countless times, even though they’d already Liked your album.
I imagine how much data is tracked through the years and how much servers are required to hold all the data.
On one hand, this current Post system will somehow send off indications of how popular/unpopular you are even though it might not be accurate (remember there’s always the FB algorithm issue). On the other hand, it is not fun for organizing my albums and it makes me not want to post anything anymore because I really don’t want to deal with how many Likes I’m getting / not getting).
Why can’t this be K.I.S.S (keep it simple, stupid)? Why can’t photos and albums be kept simple the way they had been originally?
I know the answer. Because FB is a business and business goals always come first. So this is a ranting post and I’m almost done. All I’m saying is, this race of updates, almost for the sake of updating, do not always go too well [with me as a consumer]. But then again, how many more years will I still use Facebook? What Facebook does with its systems too might not even matter by then.
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Kristine Li is a Designer, Travel Blogger, Artist and previously, a Software Engineer.
