592. Facebook Analysis and Worth

Some of you might have noticed that I decided to delve into the facebook world. However, it is only to analyze its usefulness. I give it below passing grades. If you are looking for a financial worth, look at this article valuing Facebook at $13.80 per share -- remember its IPO opened around $42 per share less than a week ago. However, I am reviewing Facebook from a design and usability perspective. Having over 6 years in actual software design process and another 14+ in software usability and support, I am NOT impressed with Facebook. It looks and reacts like a patchwork, bottom-up application that is obviously not easy to expand since common interfaces don't seem to be there. For example, look at its latest Trending Articles kludge that pops up in NewsFeed and elsewhere without anyway to prevent it and remove it. The interface to remove information from News Feed obviously is not a common interface that is implemented. I remember back in the IBM labs when I took responsibility for a parsing piece of software where the previous owners had no clue what the original designer designed. Instead of using the SIMPLE designer's interface, albeit he assumed followers would understand, each new expansion branched to their own code to parse rather than using the simple table-driven scheme. Anyways, Facebook shows all the symptoms of that. What it offers is the ability to POST your every move via cell phones to everybody (or friends) and to receive posts from others via cell phones. After about 2 months, I have noticed that less than 4% of my friends use Facebook at all to declare their every move. Less than 10% ever check Facebook. Less than 25% seem to use it more than twice per month.

Thus, with a $13.80 per share worth based on financials and a look inside, or from a user's perspective, with low ratings, I'd stay away from this as an investment. It is NOT a Google! I can only seeing it being bought out by someone like Google and being rewritten with standard coding interfaces before it amounts to anything. As a matter of fact, this application would be so easy to write from scratch that I see nobody picking it up unless they want its accounts for something. Stay away from Facebook.