The 10 Worst Features On Social Media Platforms That Make You Want To Break Stuff
I recently noticed that someone I know is exclusively NEGATIVE on Twitter. Every tweet is mean-spirited, a complaint, an insult. They aren’t adding, they are detracting. I went through my own tweets to check myself to make sure my percentage was in line of positive to negative and it turns out that I’m very positive in my tweets. The previous 20 tweets had 17 positive, 1 negative and 2 pretty neutral. The previous 20 tweet replies were 7 positive, 7 negative, and 6 neutral. I’m actually pretty fine with that ratio. I’ll put someone in their place and mix it up from time to time if they take a shot at someone I respect, if they’re flat out incorrect or if they just piss me off for a random reason, and I almost always either A) Win or B) End up making a friend after starting as an adversary - those are actually kinda fun.
Not saying that is HOW to engage on Twitter per se, that’s just overall how I engage. Mostly positive, but I’ll share opinions and force people to think too. And sometimes I’ll just point out something stupid - a mini rant.
Now, I was thinking of a list topic as a rant against little things that piss me off on the various social media platforms I use every day. Obviously a blog gives you plenty of space to rant as long and strong as you like. I started to make my list and got to thinking eh - maybe I shouldn’t put the negative energy out there on my blog. So I went to this really nice list of 189 Creative Blog Post Ideas from Coschedule.com and look at number 50!!! That was all the permission I needed. Besides my blogging is pretty much always informative and mostly positive (even if a little snarky from time to time) so I’m pretty sure one post won’t change that. I have done this before, I just needed some fresh encouragement. Now I have it, so let’s get to the bitching and complaining shall we?
The 10 Worst Features On Social Media…
I love Canva. I really do. I use the premium version which allows me to add team members and save brand colors, fonts - I love it. You know what I don’t love? Canva square borders that don’t extend to rectangles. I don’t always want EVERY. SINGLE. GRAPHIC. TO. BE. A. SQUARE. Am I missing something? There are so many cool border graphics that are squares without extendable dimensions. You can change the size but not the shape. Makes me crazy.
I can easily find 357 things I love about Facebook and probably 745 that I hate (which I’ve written about before). One of several things I can’t stand is that Facebook doesn’t allow more than 3 likes from pages you manage on a post. In other words if you manage 6 pages for 6 different brands and they are all in the same city and would reasonably support each other you can’t have more than 3 of them like a post of the others. I get that FB may want to avoid someone artificially inflating the likes, but if that’s what your goal was, it would be a pretty damn involved cockamamie way to do it. “I need more likes for this business so I’m going to try to find 5 other business pages I can commandeer in order to up the likes by at least FIVE!!! Yeah that’s what I’ll do!” Stupid.
This is a broader issue that obviously goes beyond the social media platforms, but the rules barring the playing of copyrighted music on a livestream are antiquated and ridiculous in spirit. I can’t livestream on Facebook with some music playing in the background that I bought and paid for? I’m TALKING (or singing) over it!!! Are people going to what - pirate the music from the background of my livestream with my voice over it? I’m promoting these artists that I like. People listen to my music opinions and they’ll buy the music themselves if I turn them on to something. I can talk about music, post about, link to it, play it for a friend - but it CAN’T be playing in the background….?
Twitter not allowing edits. People have been begging for an edit button for years. There has to be a way to allow this without compromising the integrity of tweeting. Heck even put an indicator that the tweet has been edited if you want - just let us correct a freaking typo for crying out loud!
Speaking of edits, back to Facebook - why does Facebook allow you to edit posts on a business page but NOT after you’ve boosted the post. Why? What’s the difference? It’s even more important to be able to edit a post once it’s boosting because you’ve paid for it to reach more people. I just don’t get it.
LinkedIn being miserly with handing out approvals for livestreaming is also stupid. Why? If you allow livestreaming allow it for everyone! If your livestreams suck on LinkedIn the community will take care of it. No one will watch and they can use an algorithm for that to determine how to improve the feed just like EVERY. OTHER. PLATFORM. Someone explain this one to me….
Twitter not verifying more accounts - here’s another one I wrote about 5 years ago. Update: Cathy Hackl is now verified (as she should be) but Juntae DeLane still is NOT. Twitter still hasn’t got this right.
Isn’t it time Facebook gave us the ability to include just ONE link in an Instagram post? C’mon…. what is the purpose of this?
Okay so I don’t have any real complaints about Happs.TV but I’m going to include one anyway for the sole purpose of talking about them in this article like they’re a major platform because I think they can be, and I love those guys so - listen up Happs and include the CURRENT number of viewers in a livestream at any given moment - not just the total for the whole broadcast. DAMN YOU GUYS!!!! Hehe…. this is really such a minor nothing thing (but it would be nice).
Let’s make this last one a catch all about Facebook which STILL continues to get more bloated and impossible to navigate just when you think it can’t get worse. Creator studio, Publishing Tools, Facebook Manager, Business Manager, Ad Center, Business Suite all with multiple layers of tools and pages to navigate - a thousand different ways to do 10 different things that seemingly change ALL. THE. TIME. You can’t ever remember how to get back to that one screen that allowed you to do that thing that one time… It’s like they have nothing better to do than to mess with digital marketers.
Ahhhh…….thanks - I feel much better.
What are yours? I’m sure there are plenty more out there - get ‘em off your chest in the comments below!
M10 Social is owned by Doug Cohen in West Bloomfield, MI and provides social media training and digital marketing services from the Frameable Faces Photography studio Doug owns with his wife Ally. He can be reached there at tel:248-790-7317, by mobile at tel:248-346-4121 or via email at mailto:doug@frameablefaces.com.
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