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Facebook More Hated Than Banks, Utilities 332

Posted by CmdrTaco from the conspiracy-mode-engaged dept.
jfruhlinger writes "According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Facebook raises a lot of ire among its customers — more than Bank of America or AT&T Mobility. This bodes ill for the company — as blogger Chris Nerney points out, many of the others on the most-hated list are utilities and other companies with monopolies, which can hold customers despite bad service. At least Facebook edged out MySpace." Unsurprisingly, the most important thing about Google+ is that it's not Facebook.
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Facebook More Hated Than Banks, Utilities More

Facebook More Hated Than Banks, Utilities

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  • Never underestimate (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chemicaldave ( 1776600 ) on Thursday June 30, 2011 @10:10AM (#36622268)
    Never underestimate the ability of people to hate something that didn't exist a few years ago and they get for free.

    • Re:Never underestimate (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Sez Zero ( 586611 ) on Thursday June 30, 2011 @10:11AM (#36622288) Journal
      I don't pay money for Facebook, but it is certainly not free.

      • Re:Never underestimate (Score:5, Insightful)

        by TheLink ( 130905 ) on Thursday June 30, 2011 @10:16AM (#36622354) Journal
        You're probably not Facebook's customer either.

        You're what Facebook sells to their customers.

        • isn't it "You're what Facebook tries to sell to their potential customers"? The whole business model is imo based on an idea and at the moment venture capital companies believe in this dream

          • They're still privately held, so we don't know numbers, but they're certainly selling some advertising. Whether the revenues are on par with the VC valuation of the company is a big mystery, but there are definitely real, paying customers.

            • Re:Never underestimate (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Thursday June 30, 2011 @11:15AM (#36623120)

              They have customers, but it's not their users. They're the product. Yes, dear user of Facebook, you're not their "valued customer". You are what they are selling. You are the product. You are a bit like the native Americans when the white people came. Ignorant of what this "trade" really means, what it really means that you hand over your private space for a few trinkets. Your data is valuable, but you hand it over for a few shiny beads.

              But hey, don't feel bad. Facebook ain't the only one. It's about the same with private TV. You, watching it, aren't their customer. You're their product. They're selling you to the ad companies. So it's not like Facebook is the first "evil" company to exploit that people attach little value to their time and data, they just took it to a new level.

              • What's the big deal? You don't think Google has been a public service since the beginning do you? You control how much information about yourself is out there to be collected. Want privacy? Stop freely publishing your information. Sure certain services over the internet might not be available to you without registering but none of these services are mandatory are they? Privacy is not a right that can be guaranteed. If you do not take sensible precautions when publishing your information recklessly across th

    • Re:Never underestimate (Score:5, Insightful)

      by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Thursday June 30, 2011 @10:14AM (#36622318)
      I'm not even on Facebook and I hate it, because everybody stopped sending personal emails. Everything is getting too centralized.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        This is one reason why I was disappointed that Google Wave didn't work out--it would be nice to move to something that is an open protocol, like email, rss, etc. that can be decentralized and hosted across different sites.

        Really, I feel like things are rarely new, just sort of polished up. IRC, html, newsgroups, email--most people could use these standards for whatever they want and wouldn't notice any difference in their lives.

        I'm not saying nothing is new, or that new communication methods shouldn't be de

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by DrXym ( 126579 )
          Google only had themselves to blame for Wave. It had a user interface only a mother could love. You could look at this thing for hours and still not figure what the hell it's for or where to begin to use it. It's a shame because underneath there is a reasonable concept but it needed more thought gone into introducing people to the concept backed up with some decent examples.

    • Re:Never underestimate (Score:5, Insightful)

      by antifoidulus ( 807088 ) on Thursday June 30, 2011 @10:17AM (#36622368) Homepage Journal
      See, there is a huge difference between AT&T et al. and Facebook, namely that with AT&T, you have to enter into a deal with them, they cannot just put you on their network without your consent. Now you may have gripes with the service you get after you get on their networks, but at the end of the day it is something you consented to. Facebook on the other hand has the potential to draw you into things you never consented to. For instance get tagged in a picture that you would rather not be tagged in? Tough shit, deal with it. The list goes on. So yeah, you can hate something you got for free, esp. when you didn't want it in the first place.

      • And this is why different groups of people know me by different nicknames. Tag me all you want, aside of people who know I'm part of that group nobody will find me in your Facebook profile, and most certainly not my boss.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by uncanny ( 954868 )
        If i'm not a member of facebook how can someone tag me?

        • Friends tag your face with your name. Only since you're not a member, you can't untag it.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by uncanny ( 954868 )
            I don't know if you're new to the computer but that ability has been available since, well... at least the bbs (pre-internet) days. I can go onto my personal webpage, put someones picture on it and "tag" them
    • Kind of like herpes

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dmesg0 ( 1342071 )
      I hate it because I'm forced to use it.

    • I don't see you paying to get the privilege of reading (or reading about) such complaints!

      So quit your bitching! It's free! Be thankful!

      • Only if your data and time have no value. Which I doubt. At least your data is valuable. Giving it away for the laughable value you get in return is... well, I don't wanna start a flamewar.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MarkvW ( 1037596 )

      I still remember how very much I hated AOL when I got their trial membership for "free." I don't think I've ever hated any company more.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 )

      Facebook is free. Free as in beer. It's nice, you can take as much as you want, but the more you do, the worse is the awakening the next day when you go "gee, what have I done?"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by X.25 ( 255792 )

      Never underestimate the ability of people to hate something that didn't exist a few years ago and they get for free.

      Considering that it's free and people still hate it... says a lot.

      And it's not free.

  • More importantly it is better (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Giant Electronic Bra ( 1229876 ) on Thursday June 30, 2011 @10:11AM (#36622278)

    That's the real significant fact about it. Facebook's UI is a gargantuan POS. G+ has a vastly better UI and functionality that is clearly more useful for what it is intended to do. I don't understand what it is about sites like Facebook, but these services just seem to be incapable of not turning themselves into crap. Hopefully G+ will just stick to doing what it does now and doing it better. I don't understand why I should need to be able to run 'applications' in a social networking site, I can go to Popcap and do that if I want, etc.

    So yeah, G+ isn't Facebook, and that's a good thing.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by eln ( 21727 )
      Google itself used to have a nice simple interface, but they've been slowly shoehorning more and more cruft into it as time goes on. So, they're not immune either.

      The primary reason is the profit motive. Corporations, especially corporations with lots of shareholders such as public companies, need constant profit growth to satisfy those shareholders. So, they have to constantly be looking for new ways to monetize their brand. For free web services, this usually means becoming steadily more insufferab

      • You've got me thinking, why could you not have a distributed social networking standard? Why (from a technology viewpoint) could you not have competing social networking sites, or even run my own one much as I would an email server or a blog?
        In this case friending a person would create a two way link between the two identities allowing you to tag them in photos, invite them to events and effectively subscribe you to their rss feed of news posts.
        The technology is all there - anyone interested in creating an

        • Because the only sites likely to implement it are the ones that nobody uses. FB is unlikely to ever use a standard format as it would make it too easy to leave, they'd have to start learning about integrity and ethical business practices if they wanted to participate in that.

        • This isn't a technical problem. There already are schemes like that - the problem is, nobody's promoting them, because there's no money in it.

        • The whole working of social networks promotes monopolies.

          Back in the days we were all chatting on ICQ, and newcomers went to ICQ because everyone else was on there already.

          Later MS replaced it with MSN - same effect.

          Online auction: e-bay. There is no other. Why use e-bay? Because everyone else uses it, so that's where your buyers are if you want to sell something, and that's where all the offers are found if you want to buy something. There are local alternatives (geographical location matters for that k

      • Oh, it may well go to the dogs too. At least the core functionality is better than Facebook's. Only time will tell. Google may add more cruft to their stuff, but they don't seem to go as crazy with that as many places do. Fundamentally some kind of distributed social networking might be ideal, but I think technologically we're not really anywhere near being there yet.

  • But it's still Google... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by eln ( 21727 ) on Thursday June 30, 2011 @10:12AM (#36622294)
    It may not be Facebook, but it's still Google, and Google is still a company whose entire business model revolves around mining user data and using it to sell advertising. Google also shares Facebook's general disdain for privacy.

    As long as we depend on single monolithic sites run by for-profit entities for social networking, we'll continue to have the same problems we do with Facebook. The whole social networking model is based around providing the service for free while making money from targeted advertising. As long as that's the case, the companies running the social networks will do whatever they can to try and entice people to reveal more information about themselves. Switching from Facebook to Google isn't going to change that.

    • Re:But it's still Google... (Score:5, Informative)

      by evanbd ( 210358 ) on Thursday June 30, 2011 @10:27AM (#36622518)
      It may still be monolithic, but it's at least possible to switch and take your data with you [google.com]. Not perfect, but a huge improvement.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • As long as social networking sites don't interoperate (I can't for example through linked_in friend someone on facebook) then this is going to be the problem because they have to be free because they only work if they have enough people on them. True in the early days they could limit it to just college students because to a large approximation you caught the entire social circle with that restriction. Now if they did interoperate then you could have pay sites that didn't sell your information and yet still

    • While this is true, Google does let you get your data back out if you should so choose, whereas Facebook actively discourages or outright prevents this.

      Additionally, do you ever see Facebook choosing to interoperate with Diaspora in any meaningful way? Now, do you see Google choosing to interoperate with Diaspora in any meaningful way?

      While I think Google will choose to try to interoperate if they can, I think their open data policy makes it hard to not interoperate, even if they don't want to.

      So yeah, some

  • Dont use it then. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drolli ( 522659 ) on Thursday June 30, 2011 @10:13AM (#36622310) Journal

    I always wonder about the people who hate something, and despite quite some competition, continue to use it. Do your friends really stop talking to you if you leave facebook? Then look for other friends.

    • Yeah, I mean, you really can't quit the utilities or the bank. Most people don't even have a choice for utilities, and if you do have a choice, they are all about the same price and evilness anyways. For banks, you could get by without a bank account, but it would be probably more difficult than just having a bank account that sucks anyway. Facebook on the other hand, is completely optional. Getting off facebook would probably give many people a lot more free time.

  • G+ isn't Facebook, so what? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dkleinsc ( 563838 ) on Thursday June 30, 2011 @10:16AM (#36622364) Homepage

    The big draw of Facebook in its early years was "It's not MySpace". What makes anybody think that the story of G+ is going to be any different than the story of MySpace and Facebook?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Spad ( 470073 )

      Nothing, but that won't stop people from potentially flocking to Google+ from Facebook just like they did from MySpace.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nemyst ( 1383049 )

      Unlike facebook or MySpace, G+ is just a subproject of Google. That already is a large difference in dynamics. Google might be willing to experiment more with it than a company whose entire business model relies on their social network's success.

    • I've been curious about this. It seems like Facebook took off because as you say "it's not Myspace". What happens when the next generation wants to post their teenage/college sex/drinking exploits? I can't picture them doing so on the same service Grandma uses.

      Is social networking going to become an alternating generational cycle where each upcoming generation must move to a new service to get away from their family? Or will people adopt multiple networks? I expect a geek to do so naturally but the average

      • Did granny ever become involved in MySpace? Don't think so.

        When/if Facebook is replaced by something else, granny will move as well. The whole net population has changed over the last decade or two - in MySpace's heyday granny wasn't online yet, and the youngsters were still by themselves. That part has changed a lot.

        Most likely they will just continue posting those compromising photos in /b/ or so... at least it's usually not going to stay online forever.

    • It may be me... but I don't recall MySpace as a real networking site, which offered personal messaging and so like Facebook does. I've always seen it more as a successor of sites like geocities, where everyone could set up their own web page. I've also never seen MySpace getting anything near the popularity Facebook has now.

      Though Facebook is not a place to set up your own web site but a place to send messages to (groups of) other people - they call it "friends" - and to form special interest-related group

  • WRONG - you are not Facebook's "customer"! (Score:5, Informative)

    by MadCow42 ( 243108 ) on Thursday June 30, 2011 @10:20AM (#36622404) Homepage

    You are Facebook's PRODUCT... not their customer. Their customer is the advertisers. Their only motive is to not piss you off enough to go away.

    • Who the hell clicks on fb ads anyway? I just use it to keep in touch with family and friends. I don't use any of those silly apps, and I never click on any ads, heck, I do;t even glance at the right hand side of the browser window.

    • One could argue that for a lot of society today - that you are the product, not the customer.

      More importantly, "not piss you off enough to go away" gets a lot harder if there is a viable place to go. Right now, an alternative doesn't exist, but G+ has the potential to actually give people a place to jump to. Things could get interesting...

    • Exactly, and thank you for saying that. I suspect that Facebook's actual customers - advertisers - are very happy indeed with them. Users? Screw 'em, just not hard enough that they leave.

  • I need circles indeed. (Score:3)

    by unity100 ( 970058 ) on Thursday June 30, 2011 @10:24AM (#36622468) Homepage Journal
    i dont want to lump everyone i am acquainted with in the same group, and have to choose from sharing or not sharing something with all of them. Thats not what we do in real life. Someone way past from elementary school doesnt need to see what i share with my gaming circle. Or, someone from professional circle doesnt have to see something i shared with gamers. And i dont need to be thinking about whether sharing something will be appropriate because all parties will see it.

    facebook does not have this differentiation. you can change privacy settings to allow/disallow people from seeing, yet it is a 1 vs 0 boolean choice. you cant differentiate in groups. and even these settings are buried deep, problematic to do (you have to manually eliminate 140 people from seeing your updates down to 14 people), and facebook is constantly changing these settings so that they will be able to snag and sell more data to their corporate customers.

    it has really become a steaming pile of shit.

    i am on it, because of a few valued people are still on it, and not technically affluent to be on anything else. but, they could easily use google+, and when google+ comes, i am going to encourage them to sign up.

    • Some of us were calling it a steaming pile of shit before calling it a steaming pile of shit was cool.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zenaku ( 821866 )

      I don't really want to jump to the defense of facebook here, but your particular complaint seem to stem from being ignorant of its "lists" feature.

      Create a list for each of your circles, and when you post something, select only the lists you want. Most of my updates for example, go only to people on my "Friends In Real Life" list.

      • currently, i, someone who makes his living over web development, am not aware of that feature. if, even i am not aware of that feature without extending extra effort, then it means that feature is user-unfriendly to use. i shouldnt have to extend that effort.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Zenaku ( 821866 )

          Listen, I am not going to get in an argument about whether anything on facebook is user-friendly or not, but the fact that you were not aware of it doesn't mean it is poorly implemented or hidden.

          There is a big button at the top of the friends list page that says "Add List." on it. When you post something, there is a drop-down immediately to the left of the "Share" button to choose who can see it. And when this highly requested feature was finally added, there were plenty of news articles about it on all

    • Re:I need circles indeed. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Grizzley9 ( 1407005 ) on Thursday June 30, 2011 @10:53AM (#36622868)
      I don't understand your post. FB does indeed have these groups. You can setup individual groups and add who you want to them just like "Circles" in Google+. Then when posting you can simply select the lock icon drop arrow and only post to that group (so they can see) or post so only they can't see. What Google+ has done is to just make that selection the default instead of an option. It is an improvement sure, but FB still has it readily and easily available with the same effort that Google+ has. G+ just has the greener pastures going for it right now (Sparks and Hangouts don't seem enough to pull people from FB).

  • ...This bodes ill for the company...

    I don't know why. The other companies mentioned, Bank of America; AT&T, are doing just fine even though their customers hate them. Saying that it "bodes ill" for Facebook because they are universally loathed is just wishful thinking.

           

    • The difference is that BoA and AT&T have a much stronger means by which to prevent people from leaving. Remember how MySpace was the social network before it pretty much collapsed over night? It wouldn't surprise me if that happened to FB in the near future when the cool kids find someplace else to hang out.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • My axe to grind (Score:3)

    by Voyager529 ( 1363959 ) <voyager529@ya[ ].com ['hoo' in gap]> on Thursday June 30, 2011 @10:26AM (#36622506)

    ...and the axe of many of my friends, is that Facebook keeps changing their layout, users find out when they log in and are like "...what's going on?" since they can't find whatever it is they're looking for, and there's no way to change it back. I'm certain that Farmville users can find their farms, but it's getting more and more distilled into a platform where the communication aspects are less useful.

    While yes, 99% of the groups were "1,000,000 strong for not clubbing baby seals" and "I hate it when people text me 'k'", there were a few groups that I was a part of that were genuine groups with active discussion boards. All of the discussion threads turned into wall posts with massive amounts of comments...and to someone, that made sense.

    There's more and more spam happening. While admittedly they're doing much more to mitigate it than Myspace ever did, filtering out the malicious links is still ultimately a manual job. Even the nonmalicious stuff that's still unwanted takes a ridiculous amount of time to do right. While I blocked Mafia Wars, *ville, etc., my block list is a mile long because of it. The only one that was actually fun to me was Superpoke (there is, in fact, an odd humor to be found in throwing a virtual sheep at a friend), but the first time there was an official "new facebook", Superpoke got ditched in the process, so plug-ins became less useful unless you were someone like Zynga.

    I was a fan of the 'old' messaging system, where it was effectively an e-mail. it made a lot of sense, since it was much easier to scroll the address book (i.e. my friend list), my friends frequently set up SMS notifiations so they could respond in a timely manner, and read receipts were automatic. When they asked if I wanted to change to the 'new message' system, I was like, "yeah, I'll try it out", silly me thinking they would allow me to go back if I didn't like it. Naturally, it was a one-way street.

    At this point, Facebook to me is just another e-mail account, with a 'public message' view, a 'private message' view, and a game view (along with questionable privacy practices). Some of my friends are holdouts and still don't have a Facebook. While I used to be all "zomg you need one", I'm finding myself now saying "don't sweat it - is e-mail or cell better for you?" This usually provides me at least one - usually two - explicit means of contacting them. Facebook is relevant and useful, but I feel that there's a distinct possibility that it's in a position where its best days are behind it. If Zuckerburg is smart, he'll cash out now.

    • I logged into facebook recently and it took me like 10 minutes to find my list of friends. At some point they literally hid the friends list

  • My expectation (no, of course I didn't RTFA) is that people hate the relatively rigid UI format of facebook which changes without notice on a fairly regular basis, with no attempt to transition or provide guidance. Whether it's the list friends online (list->pictures) or the "enter now submits your comment" features, or any of a dozen other annoyances, they all generate ill will, even if they may be useful in the long run.

    People like the concept of facebook - the connectivity, the games (ugh), organizat

    • First, "hate" is the wrong word here - more accurate is "lowest satisfaction rating". And it's easy - people are inclined to dislike things considerably more when they perceive they have no choice in where they get services from; and the service itself tends to be not as good when that situation arises. When you look at the other businesses in the list, you'll see that most of them hold near-monopolies in their areas of service as well.

  • Facebook raises ire amongst its "customers"? Really? So, amongst the corporations to which it sells aggregate advertising data? Huh, I wouldn't have expected those customers to be so upset.

  • First: the link in the summary is wrong, it links to a marketing firm. The ACS is here.

    While the original Business Insider post is straightforward enough (BTW the summary should have linked here [businessinsider.com], instead of to itworld spam... I find the itworld spam interesting.

    Facebook is far from the most interesting company in that top 19 list - in fact the general trend seems to be companies with relative monopolies in their service areas; but does anyone really think it coincidence that ITWorld ran this article with th

  • We don't need no social networks! What we need is a good anti-social network!
  • And yet millions of people still use it. Nothing is ever going to change, no matter how much they are despised, until consumers stand up for their rights by not using the service or product that offends them!

    *Proud not-user of Facebook*

  • I'm asking because G+ hasn't open its doors to everyone yet

  • The edge Facebook used to have is that it wasn't Myspace.

    Facebook's user count is dropping. The problem seems to be that the users are becoming annoyed with all the junk,

    The rise of mobile use may be a problem for Facebook. Anecdote: a female friend of mine in SF is very much into doing everything possible through her iPhone. She recently told me to use email, text, or voice to reach her, rather than messaging on Facebook. She's deluged with useless Facebook status updates, and now only checks Facebook

  • This is shocking. I had no idea that advertisers were that upset with Facebook. I thought the bent over backwards to provide advertisers with everything they could possibly want. It could be a big problem for them.

  • Facebook the "most hated", and yet it keeps growing...like a flower..or cancer. You choose.

    Reminds me of that line in Howard Sterns movie when the statistics reported the #1 reason people that love Howard Sterns radio show was also the exact same reason for people that hate the Howard Stern radio show. Both groups couldn't wait to hear what he had to say next.

  • Facebook basically is a monopoly, if all your friends are there then you have no real choice... And your friends are probably in the same boat, with it being too impractical to move them all en masse.

    Unfortunately, a service of this kind basically ensures a monopoly... I don't know how such a service could be offered in a decentralised way.

  • Yeah, and now they even blame Mozilla's POSTDATA bug on it:
    Facebook doesn't want you to use the back button [mozilla.org]
    ... whereas in the old days, it was banks who were the scapegoat for this obnoxious behavior:
    Banks are holding up Mozilla to make it break the back button on SSL pages that are the result of a form submission [mozilla.org]

  • Bubble bursting? (Score:3)

    by jvillain ( 546827 ) on Thursday June 30, 2011 @12:16PM (#36623800)
    So does this mean that FB isn't worth the $50 Billion or what ever inflated to the bursting point price the banks were trying to offer only their most valued customers?

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