Amongst other things, the company now holds another record which was announced by Mark Zuckerberg in a Facebook post only – the company officially hit the 2 billion people mark, which is the number of users active every month. You can get a better idea about how big this is by understanding where other companies stand. YouTube, which is owned by Google, comes second with almost a billion and half monthly users. On the other hand, Facebook Messenger as well as WhatsApp both have around 1.2 billion users, and both are currently owned by Facebook only. A distant Snapchat meanwhile has just 255 million monthly users, and mind you, Snapchat is the only one in the group which has all other companies copying it right now.
This data has however set us thinking about the Facebook app which is how Android users often check on their Facebook accounts. The company has always had their stand that they were progressing more and more towards connecting the whole world, and making sure people were closer than ever before. So, when we consider the Facebook Android app – does it have the same data when it comes to user base? Has it also been successful in bringing the world together?
Monthly Users
Well, we can safely say, certainly not enough. The company can surely talk about its two billion users, which is impressively almost a third of the whole population of the world, it can surely talk its chest off about the billions of users who have till now downloaded its Android app. Play Store has around seventy million reviews about the Facebook app, but once we start getting into these reviews, the whole facade starts falling apart. Which makes us question the quality of the Facebook Android app and the sincerity of the company that has not yet paid as much attention as it should to making the user experience incredible.
Facebook App
The app has received all kinds of flak and not-so-good ratings from so many users on Play Store who have complained about almost everything – from the crashes that the app faces almost at random to the annoying ads that creep up amidst videos. We can safely say that the app is neither designed keeping consistency in mind nor user friendliness – both the factors that make it a less than likable experience for so many users worldwide.
Tagging people using the Android Facebook app is such a nightmare, and usually ends in having to open a laptop to finish the process. The founder Zuckerberg has talked time and again about Facebook videos and their importance, but the Android app has such bad performance as far as videos are concerned. Few videos on the app have just randomly started playing, and few would require you to click on them – not once but a few times. The app is simply inconsistent and usually the problems and stuck ups it is facing has to be solved by closing the app and launching it again, or restarting the device. The app now has been active for around seven years, and even on premier devices like Samsung Galaxy S8, it is facing issues like these which is simply not done.
Oh, and the problems do not end there. If you visit the Settings section on a Facebook Android app, you would understand the meaning of the word labyrinth. A plethora of subsections are available titled General, Security, Login, Privacy, Timeline so on and so forth, and almost every time a small change in the Settings is required, a user ends up going through each of them a few times. The app lacks the clear and neat user friendliness that is expected of an almost thirteen year old platform.
One one hand the company is expanding and growing each day, reaching out to people from different ethnicities and nationalities and ages, but a more direct and consistent and streamlined approach in its Android app has been missing. The app is affecting users all over the world, and even if we look over the fake news and other laughable information that is so easily available on the app, the company has to take responsibility for the other kinds of impact its app is creating in the lives of users all around. With more and more people having smartphones in their hands, the app is getting downloaded by increased magnitudes. And in such scenario, it is possible to bring about positive changes and prevent the negative outcomes like teen suicides due to cyber bullying.
As Facebook continues to grow, it would have to provide better and more functional app and make sure that other social issues are addressed properly cause as they say with great power comes great responsibility.
