Note: Everything in this comment is based on personal experience and observations as a Facebook user. They're all my opinions too.
In my experience of using Facebook (primarily groups), it is a highly buggy platform and it's very hard to say that it behaves consistently or even that features are really ready before release - this, IMO, implies that both development and testing as well as rolling out the releases are messed up. This post talks about building a better "conveyor belt", so to speak, to release changes, but if the basic product is buggy and didn't get good attention in design/dev/test, no improvements in the "conveyor belt" can help make it awesome.
Standard features that have existed for long may or may not work (how good are the regression tests then?). Posts and comments in groups may sometimes just disappear (thank goodness an admin activity log was added sometime in the last several months so we can stop wondering if an admin deleted anything). There's a feature in groups to mandate people wanting to join a group to answer some questions setup by the admins. Most people submit the answers but that never gets saved, and it's unknown what the trick is to get the answers to stay (this has been around for several months now?). New features aren't always announced.
I see Facebook as a platform that's used to share ephemeral things. So this level of quality is probably just ok (though I don't believe it justifies the company's revenues and valuation).
Since I do not conform to Facebook's ridiculous policy on using "real/authentic names", I don't even venture into contacting support if I see any issue, lest my presence be obliterated (yes, I try to keep away from Facebook, but do need it for some important awareness building because there's a large audience there).
As a platform used by billions, Facebook still has a very long way to go in being reliable.
In my experience of using Facebook (primarily groups), it is a highly buggy platform and it's very hard to say that it behaves consistently or even that features are really ready before release - this, IMO, implies that both development and testing as well as rolling out the releases are messed up. This post talks about building a better "conveyor belt", so to speak, to release changes, but if the basic product is buggy and didn't get good attention in design/dev/test, no improvements in the "conveyor belt" can help make it awesome.
Standard features that have existed for long may or may not work (how good are the regression tests then?). Posts and comments in groups may sometimes just disappear (thank goodness an admin activity log was added sometime in the last several months so we can stop wondering if an admin deleted anything). There's a feature in groups to mandate people wanting to join a group to answer some questions setup by the admins. Most people submit the answers but that never gets saved, and it's unknown what the trick is to get the answers to stay (this has been around for several months now?). New features aren't always announced.
I see Facebook as a platform that's used to share ephemeral things. So this level of quality is probably just ok (though I don't believe it justifies the company's revenues and valuation).
Since I do not conform to Facebook's ridiculous policy on using "real/authentic names", I don't even venture into contacting support if I see any issue, lest my presence be obliterated (yes, I try to keep away from Facebook, but do need it for some important awareness building because there's a large audience there).
As a platform used by billions, Facebook still has a very long way to go in being reliable.