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Why the Facebook App Is Rated Below 2 Stars
- tstonez 12y agoMy 1st guess was forcing everyone to download and use Messenger
- zo1 12y agoI believe "tricking" is the correct term to use.
- Raphmedia 12y agoMessenger is great. You can forget about the whole Facebook feed experience while still being able to talk to your friends and family!
- inthewoods 12y agoHere's a chart of Facebook's overall app score according to Applause Analytics over time (since 2011). It is an abstraction on the generic star rating. http://i.imgur.com/iB2SMwC.png http://i.imgur.com/iB2SMwC.png What it shows is that there has been a general trend down in their app score - there seems to be a further dip around the time of Messenger but the reviews seem to indicate a lot of frustration around stability.
- morpher 12y agoFor apps that have been popular for a long time, I wonder if there is a negative bias in reviews (beyond that already present in all online reviews). A customer who gets an update that breaks an app they use every day is very likely to submit a negative review (even if they have reviewed positively in the past). However, a customer that gets and update that make incremental changes that largely don't affect them has no incentive to go post a positive review of the new version. So, the positive reviews come only from new customers, which are relatively small for apps that have reached saturation.
- inthewoods 12y agoOne interesting sub-trend in the data would support that view - it is that the review star rating, meaning reviews+star rating is, on average, more negative than just star rating. So people post a negative review when they feel pain, but not in the case where they are just rating the app.
- smackfu 12y agoI still don't understand why people hate Messenger so much. It works fine for me, indistinguishable from when it was included in the main Facebook app.
- teaneedz 12y agoMany don't trust FB anymore or the invasive data tracking of Messenger. I've overheard comments from friends and family that they won't be forced to download another app, especially one that keeps such close watch on users.
- dragonwriter 12y agoMessenger is much more intrusive to the whole phone experience than the Facebook messaging functionality that was included in the app. Though, to be honest, even that went downhill in the same direction as Messenger -- though not as far -- before it was removed and messenger made mandatory.
- rebootthesystem 12y agoThis is a general comment. I am not defending Facebook at all. One of the problems with feedback systems is that they truly fail to present a balanced view of the user or customer base. The people with the motivation and drive to post reviews and feedback in ecosystems such as the App Store and Amazon are those with problems. And so the rating that is produced isn't a true reflection of how well an app is received or how good a product might be. We happen to have both a physical product business operating on Amazon and an app business on the Apple App Store. Based on this experience I'll say most apps and products receive feedback from 1 out of 500 to 1,000 people who purchase the product. Put another way, the rating figure is based on the opinions of approximately 0.1% of users, if that. And it is also far more likely that the review-posting population is highly biased in favor of people experiencing difficulties. In other words, based on my experience, I think these rating systems that consist of a linear vote count equation are deeply flawed as they fail to capture reality in any measurable way.
- wl 12y agoFacebook seems to be fishing for a broader selection of reviewers with nag screens asking for a review.
- jessaustin 12y agoThat tactic wouldn't seem likely to generate favorable reviews.
- throwawaymsft 12y agoReview systems need "page rank" or at least some way to filter based on whether you, personally, found a review helpful. I don't care if a 10 year old rated an app 1 star because they didn't like the colors, or a new computer user was confused by an interface. I want to know if people like me -- with my experience level -- found the app difficult. Movie reviews follow the same thing, it's hard to look at overall ratings. I want to know the opinions of people like me.
- kevb 12y ago
- coldcode 12y agoAs an iOS developer (and long time developer of apps dating back to early MacOS) I find it indefensible to have so many app crashes. This statements "As you may know, Facebook does not have big QA teams…we believe that developers are responsible for their own code, and they’re supposed to write the tests to do that." is total bullshit. I've seen this happen in multiple environments (big and small) over the years and it always results in crap results. QA/Test engineers are professionals at doing testing and should be testing continuously since day 1. It's nice the developers try to produce good code, but expecting them to be professional QA is ludicrous. My last large iOS app (previous employer) had a crash rate of 0.17% and we had awesome QA people who wouldn't let anything go out the door unless they were happy.
- morpher 12y agoI agree with you on the need for good dedicated test engineers, but even an apparently low crash rate can be damaging at scale. If you have 10,000,000 customers, a crash rate of 0.17% (over some unspecified time period) is 17,000 crashes (in the same time period). On the other hand, if the crash is deterministic, but caused by some user-specific state that affects 0.17% of your customers, that's 17,000 unhappy customers who are drastically more likely to post reviews than the potentially millions of happy customers not experiencing crashes (and perhaps reviewed the app positively years ago). Note: I don't use Facebook's app often, and have no context for what the actual issues are.
- coldcode 12y agoTrue on volume, we only had about 15K users per day. Half the bugs were iOS issues we could do nothing about, and the most of the rest were data related which were out of our control (but we fixed when they appeared). It's just the QA statement that bugs me, Apple may have quality issues but they have a gazillion products, and FB has very few.
- forrestthewoods 12y agoIt'd be a lot more manageable if Apple could simply provide memory guarantees to apps. It's not an unreasonable request. Having to close other apps or reboot the device to get an app to launch is frustrating for developers and users alike.
- inthewoods 12y agoFacebook is clearly a big believer in test automation - to the extent that they do not appear to believe (by their approach and hiring) in manual testing - big mistake imho. Best approach from my point of view is a portfolio approach that includes automation and manual testing.
- choward 12y agoFor me the one reason I had to uninstall the app and rate it 1 star were the notifications. Most of the notifications that are actually useful you can toggle on/off (like receiving a message). However, this particular useless one is not toggleable and occurred at least once a day. Asking me if I know somebody is not a "notification". My phone should not vibrate or make a noise because Facebook wants to friend more people. There are other annoying notifications, but this is the main one that pisses me off.
- martin_tipgain 12y agoBtw. I wanted to boost my blog post on facebook. Facebook didn't approve it. Reason: "Your ad wasn't approved because it includes an improper reference to Facebook". Wasn't facebook all about free speech? https://twitter.com/mposchenrieder/status/557225783286980608 https://twitter.com/mposchenrieder/status/557225783286980608
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- fleshweasel 12y agoFacebook has a reputation as a battery hog on iOS. http://www.scottyloveless.com/blog/2014/the-ultimate-guide-to-solving-ios-battery-drain http://www.scottyloveless.com/blog/2014/the-ultimate-guide-t... I just use the website now. Somehow it manages to offer chat as well as news feed without displacing me to another domain, or whatever is analogous to opening up an entirely separate app. I just don't buy that spinning off messenger was good for customers, especially considering they have really failed to create a good experience all around.
- oesmith 12y agoSame here. I'm using the mobile web versions of Facebook, Twitter and G+ on my iPad and iPhone and I'm not (yet) missing any of the features of the native apps.
- _xander 12y agoI think this might be the start of the shift from apps back to the web. Why clutter your phone with notifications, saved data and background processes when the website offers more features with less overhead?
- Haul4ss 12y agoAll these people hate Facebook, but they still use Facebook. How many of those one-star reviews were written by people who still launch the app 20 times a day? What incentive does Facebook really have to change their QA practices?
- pestaa 12y agoI guess the more someone uses an app the more credible the review will be.
- Iftheshoefits 12y agoI'm not sure companies view it that way, and especially not companies like Facebook, whose product is the people who use their apps. As long as the person demonstrates he will use the product in spite of his problems with it, his opinions actually mean very little. Think of it like a politician might: once you've donated to his campaign he has no incentive to give a fig what you think. Of course people with lots of clout and wealth are special cases and the above don't necessarily apply to them.
- onewaystreet 12y agoFacebook Messenger has been a top 5 app in the App Store since it was released, so there hasn't been any repercussions from the one-star reviews (mostly because people don't have a choice not to use it if they use Facebook).
- im3w1l 12y agoRealistically, the main reason people use facebook is network effects. They will put up with some amount of bullshit. But the flipside of that is that if it becomes too bad, then the first people who start leaving weakens the network effects and cause more people to leave, leading to a chain reaction and a swift collapse. Facebook's incentive is to prevent such a collapse.
- onewaystreet 12y agoFacebook released Messenger for this reason. Facebook saw that people were starting to use Facebook less and stand-alone apps more (Instagram, WhatsApp, SnapChat, etc.). This is also the reason why Facebook now owns two out of those three.
- jamieomatthews 12y agoI agree completely, the crashes are the #1 problem. In fact its almost unbelievable that such a buggy app could be passed through the app store process (I'm sure Facebook gets very special treatment with app store reviews, though). One big issue I've noticed is that the app is borderline unusable on older devices (iphone 4). This may explain the huge number of people who are reporting these issues, which certainly happen less on newer devices. I've noticed what looks like a small UI hickup on my 5s will crash the iphone 4.
- smackfu 12y agoYeah, that could be it, since I don't think I've ever had a Facebook crash on my iPhone 6.
- bnolsen 12y agoInteresting facebook doesnt have 2 separate apps. A "stable" version and a "beta" version that people can use. When a beta version runs well enough make that one the stable version. People running a "beta" that has some bugs will be far more forgiving than people running "stable" versions with bugs.
- evanb 12y agoI use facebook's Paper app, which is essentially this. I have found it to be totally stable, a much more pleasing interface, and (for those who care, I personally don't) you don't need the Messenger app either. I don't use the content aggregation either--it's just a significantly nicer facebook interface. It's rate 4+ on the app store, with 512 reviews. I think it's just less well-known. Edit: link https://www.facebook.com/paper https://www.facebook.com/paper
- Polyphonie 12y agoI believe Paper is only available on the US App Store as well as being iOS only. So it isn't surprising it's not well known.
- evanb 12y agoI didn't realize it was US only. I wonder why.
- ndespres 12y agoYou might think this until you read the 1-star reviews written by people running developer/preview builds of iOS. Think "App crashes on iOS 9 alpha 6, this is a HUGE inconvenience!"
- dilap 12y agoNot providing update notes is the real mind-boggler for me. It is just a giant FU to the users. (Messenger does provide release notes; it's just the FB app proper that doesn't.)
- smackfu 12y agoIt's because app updates include features, but the roll-out of those features is staged internally at Facebook. So there are no features in any given update that can be announced.
- dilap 12y agoHmm, I find that explanation pretty uncompelling as a user. They could either hold the app release until the features go live, or list the coming features, but note that rollout would not be immediate (lots of precedent there w/ e.g. graph search).
- laoba 12y agoI noticed a lot of low ratings once Facebook hid the "Most Recent" version of the feed to force you to take 3 steps. Previously they had an easy way of switching between the two all within the first view that showed by default, now it's just a pain in the ass and it seems like none of the devs actually use it.
- Osmium 12y agoCompare this to 'Paper', Facebook's other iOS app which has 4 stars: https://www.facebook.com/paper https://www.facebook.com/paper https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/paper-stories-from-facebook/id794163692?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/paper-stories-from-facebook/... Not only is it a great app, but it's also given back to the iOS community in the form of several great open source projects: https://facebook.github.io/origami/ https://facebook.github.io/origami/ https://github.com/facebook/pop https://github.com/facebook/pop http://asyncdisplaykit.org http://asyncdisplaykit.org I find it fascinating that Facebook has two independent iOS efforts, and that while one is clearly better than the other, they seem content to pursue both apps. (Notably, Paper is still not available outside the US–I use Papers personally and can't imagine going back to the default app which just feels a bit lifeless in comparison, crashes/bugginess aside.)
- jfernandez 12y agoDoesn't the 4 stars also speak to the focus Paper has versus the 'catchall' UX of Facebook's primary app?
- smackfu 12y agoI can't stand Paper, and would have rated it poorly, but instead I just deleted it and use the normal app.
- dilap 12y agoPaper is interesting, ambitious, and certainly seems crafted with more love than the normal Facebook app, but I'm not sure you can say it's better. I tried it out for a while but ultimately found it was getting in the way of my basic FB needs. I'm a pretty geeky user; when I've tried to get more mainstream people to use Paper, they just get realllly confused and go running back to normal FB. These days, I just use the FB web page, and messenger. (I love that they split messenger into its own app. I wish they'd do something similar for desktop.)
- CanSpice 12y agoThe biggest takeaway from this story is "The absence of a specific QA function may be hampering the company as well." QA is vital. A proper QA department sees the forest and the trees. Developers see the trees (or, in some cases, just the branches). Having proper QA means that John doesn't accidentally break something that Julie was working on, because they run regression tests. It's quite astonishing that QA isn't a separate team at Facebook for their iOS apps.
- smackfu 12y agoTo be frank, if someone is rating the entire Facebook app as 1-star because they are forced to use the Messenger app, that's a bullshit review that I put no stock in.