running with paper

I’ve already griped about Facebook’s utter scary of a mobile site. I actually have been planning to review the Facebook iPhone 2.0 software I’m running, but life keeps getting in the way, and every time I sit down with the device and software, it starts “behaving” nicely and I figure the errant behavior was just a quirk of my imagination and everything else I could simply ignore.

However, I’m finally going to review 2.0 very shortly (I’m writing the post now) and put in my wish list for 3.0 (so far I’ve completely neglected to research it avoided the spoilers, yeah, that’s it).

While I was in the process of researching the history of iPhone and Facebook, I found out why it especially sucks to be me and other clueless iPhone-Facebookers.

Facebook has a SPECIAL web page for iPhone users only.

I hardly ever use the word incensed to describe my reaction to software, even when faced with certain nameless OS/hardware configuration difficulties but, yeah, I’m incensed. And I don’t mean that I smell like a house of worship.

I mentioned that I had tried to perform a bit of adminswizardy during some down time by doing it on my trusty iPhone. I received an email indicating something required my attention and action. I clicked the link (to the full Facebook site) provided in the email and was redirected to http://m.facebook.com/whatevercrapitwanted/ automatically.

And that page was crap. Did I do what I wanted to? Had I logged in? How could I check that I didn’t just report someone to the Facebook police rather than do what I had wanted to do? I couldn’t tell.

As long as I was there and logged in, I tried to navigate the site at http://m.facebook.com – FAIL. It seemed designed for people who navigate with … a phone key pad. Could the server not see I was on an iPhone and using Safari?

Okay, fine. So I swapped over to the 2.0 Facebook app_lication. I couldn’t do the administriviality there, either – presumably because I had already done it. But I’ll save my detailed shortcoming list on that score for another post.

So, what gives, Facebook? You have this whole website dedicated to iPhone users (http://iphone.facebook.com) and what? You don’t detect I’m using it and send me there? When I hit http://m.facebook.com you offer me your app_lication – does a redirect hurt?

Yes, I understand that you likely prefer I use your iPhone app_lication. I understand that creating dynamic help is hard. I understand that not all of us users want to click through a thousand wizards to use a site or application. But seriously, I had to research to find out, quite by accident, that iPhone users have their own special website? One that might not have done my administrivia, but made my iPhone-Facebook experience much more pleasant.

Suggestions (now that I’ve got my mad out):

1. You have a link to your iPhone software – presumably detecting my iPhone to put up that link. Can’t you link or redirect to the special iPhone site?

2. Ask your users what kind of phone they use! Then point them at the appropriate “nifty stuff for my phone” page that gets updated with the nifty things for their phone!

3. Use the data captured in 1 or 2 to update preferences for your users. I’d love to have an email with two “action required” links – one for if I’m reading it on my phone, and another for if I’m reading it on a more hearty computing device. Even three – one that activates the iPhone app_lication!!!

4. You already “own” the information on http://iphone.facebook.com. You can link the iPhone software there, persuade us to move to the software, and let us define it, there, as our default “mobile device” view.

5. Rinse and repeat for other specialty hardware. I don’t own a Blackberry or other device (although I’m looking at a Peek for various reasons related to the Octos), but I’m sure that these, if I may modestly call these sensible, sensible suggestions are quite cross-platform applicable.

Thanks, Facebook, if you’re out there, somewhere, reading.