Why is Facebook running so slowly?
If you’re asking this question, don’t worry, you’re not the only one experiencing problems.
Years ago, Facebook decided to use HTTPS connections for all users on the site. Although this type of connection makes users’ data more secure, it also takes longer to process and inherently slows down your browsing speed.
Even more recently, Facebook released their new asynchronous “Graph Search” service and, since it’s release, Facebook has been quite noticeably slow! Although the new search feature is quite powerful and pretty darn creepy, it also requires more messages to be sent back and forth between Facebook’s servers and your browser.
If you take a look at the address bar the next time you’re browsing Facebook, you’ll notice that the HTTPS connection appears similarly to when you’re browsing secure sites such as bank websites.
Based on the observations of many Facebook users, the decision to use HTTPS internet connections with a new feature that slows the connection to Facebook has started to really weigh heavily on users’ opinion of the social media giant.
Also, lets not forget that some other big changes have occurred with Facebook in the last year – notably the IPO and the release of Facebook Timeline.
We all know what happened when Facebook officially began to be traded publicly. The stock dropped and people didn’t believe that Facebook was anything more than a fad like MySpace.
The release of Facebook Timeline however, drew incredible scrutiny from Facebook’s core users. If you were a reader / viewer of AnsonAlex.com at that time, you may remember that I covered the beta release in depth:
11 Facebook Timeline Tips and Tricks That Everyone Should Know [Video]
Despite my approval of the redesign, there are still thousands and maybe even millions of users who despise the changes.
Considering the fact that the social media website now runs incredibly slow, having purchased Instagram is probably the only thing that keeps investors optimistic.
Think about it. Where have all the people gone that stopped using Facebook? You guessed right. Instagram.
Maybe there are some other reasons that Facebook has been running so slowly lately, but those are my best guesses.
