Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Seeing Doubles

Facebook does so many weird things these days that it sometime seems hardly worth the effort to comment on them. (Lately, for instance, it's been having trouble with links on shared items: the description of the item is lost and a mere generic link--shar.es or bit.ly or something equally uninformative--appears, no matter how things had looked in the Post to Profile popup.)

But previous to this latest oddity, Facebook has for some little time now been vexing me with thumbnail schizophrenia on its Post to Profile window. I will elect to share an item--it doesn't seem to matter if I do so with ShareThis, Share on Facebook, or via a link in the original publication--and after a moment in which all appears to be progressing normally I will be greeted with a Post to Profile window that looks like this:


Invariably, the top thumbnail is the appropriate illustration. But, also invariably, my clicking the "share" button at this point means that the bottom thumbnail will appear on my News Feed.

A little exploration reveals that the last of the number of thumbnail options presented--in this instance, seven--is the winning entry. Of course. So a conscientious poster must go through the entire inventory before he can share a post with a thumbnail that will be anything but a head-scratcher to his devoted readers:






Typically, the proper thumbnail remains in the top position. But at any point in this process, clicking
"share" will post the item with the bottom thumbnail appended.









Until finally--literally, finally, for there are no more options save "no thumbnail"--the right illustration appears all by its lonesome, and will be properly attached to the post. What a nuisance.

On the other hand, Facebook's latest troubles with correctly (or at least helpfully) rendering links is even more of a nuisance...meaning that I now long for that which I considered an annoyance only two days ago!



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