I am not the only one feeling this. Search the web and you find a lot of similar criticism of Facebook and Meta these days. I am not talking about how social media has changed the way people interact with each other, though there is certainly that going on.
No, I am talking about how the platforms have become so complicated, that most people cannot figure out what to do when enacting a simple task, like creating an advertising campaign or what to do when opening a new business account.
In too many cases, the computer says no, and the computer does not say why.
I am still on the fence about whether technology has or is close to delivering the promise it made about the imminent digital paradise for our work lives that would come with digitalisation.
For businesses, processes, they said would be easier, programming almost self-writing and reaching your target audiences would be easier. We would all share the same digital space, and we interact as if in a marketplace. 30 years later in the age of mega platforms and mobile apps, it feels like a trader is further away than ever from their target audiences, processes are bloated and make no sense, and tasks seem to take longer to complete.
Inside Facebook alone, one must switch between, the public profile, business suite, ads manager, and professional dashboards regularly. And if a person has taken a break from Meta, they will return to find the whole back end rearranged and their settings for both Facebook and Instagram lost in a new unknown section.
It is ok for people and agencies like us. We are there daily, and we are not overwhelmed with all the changes in one go. (Though we do still swear and throw our hands up in the air a lot!)
But what of the small business owner who insists on doing all the work themselves? (Entrepreneur syndrome as I call it)
Preparing the profiles, audiences, permissions, declaring who is paying for the advert, uploading an ID, business info et al… takes a lot of time and that is before the content has been made.
And once the campaign has been launched, what about reporting, and checking your statistics? Again, this is where the digital paradise promises an easy way to get our hands on meaningful result data. Nope.
So where has all this bloat come from? I am assuming Meta has world-class developers, so are these confusing changes coming from pressure points located outside Meta’s walls?
I can only imagine how many lawsuits come from every angle every week. Governments, municipalities, groups, individuals, etc… all trying to pull the company in the direction of their desire.
This is the price for being such a monolith. If you want all the market then you will get all of the feedback and complaints.
It still doesn’t explain why the structure of the platform is as chaotic as it is. Are they just applying patch after patch to satisfy various court rulings? I hope that someone can come in and create an environment that is as user-friendly as the promises given at the start of our modern digital age.
Until then, a small entrepreneur must make a choice: Use their own time to learn the way, take time away from their free time or customers, or bring in people like us who can keep that stress off the backs of the owners but at a cost.
It took too long for me to understand but I have now learned that it is more cost-effective and less stressful to get someone else in to sort it all out so I can find more leads.
Remember. You are doing great, keep pushing forward.
