An open letter to Facebook — what is a story, and do we need it?
Dear Facebook,
Please understand that not everyone is as smart as your product managers, I am certainly NOT. I don’t understand the UI for the “Your Story” feature on the web or on your mobile apps.
When I see a notification that a friend has posted a new story, I click and I get a weird looking “mobile” like window which goes away even before I can read the whole post or story or text or whatever you are calling it today. And, if I reply to a story, I am unable to figure out where it went.
If the “Story” is having a video, why am I not given any of the controls — to mute, to skip or rewind?
I understand that the Wall street loves mobile and AI, and to satisfy them you need to “mobile”ise everything — but opening a tiny window in the centre of a wide-screen won’t even fool the wall street suits that this is a mobile feature!
Lastly, what the hell, is the difference between a post and “Your story”. Maybe, I should’ve asked this question first — see, the problem is you have trained us to be so passive and lazy, we become so dumb that we don’t even understand you!
Before I go — Reading Facebook’s help on Stories, this appears to be an Instagram + Snap clone. What you post disappears after 24 hours. The only reason I can think of for a group of smart techies anywhere to create something like Stories will be this — The higher-ups in Facebook would’ve got a ‘new’ team separate from the one that is managing the News Feed tasked with ideating new features to improve “News Feed”. The ideas presented by the “new” team would’ve been strongly resisted by the existing team. The bosses would’ve all met in an off-site meeting and brokered a compromise which involves the new team to try with their thing separately and News Feed team will give a link for the same. Over a period, the new team will be hoping the usage numbers will validate their ideas, while the News Feed team might be hoping it will all go the other way. Phew!
