Facebook: changes “here to stay”
According to today’s Wall Street Journal the changes to Facebook are “here to stay”.
Furthermore, the company seems to have no regret in pissing off most of its user base.
In the article, Facebook spokeswoman Melanie Deitch is quoted as saying, “I don’t believe there’s a privacy issue here”
I think Facebook has lost touch with what their network was all about: connecting college students. I think they assumed that every person on our “friends” list is our best friend and someone who wants full disclosure. While most people personally know most of their “friends”, that doesn’t mean they want every minor detail of their online lives documented and broadcast for all of them to see. Facebook is only a sum of its users. After all, we are the ones creating the content and adding value to the site, they simply give us the soapbox to stand on.
Maybe they are to busy trying to catch up with MySpace, or maybe they forgot how quickly users can pull out of a site when dissatisfied. Maybe the recent ad deal they have struck has them only concerned with adding features and loosing track of what is most important: its users.
The real interesting thing about this is that this is the first test of the Internet generation, our generation. A generation that seemingly, by all other standards, doesn’t give a damn about privacy with the term “MySpace skank” springing to mind. We have been warned about privacy versus freedom of information and for many of us, this is the first real life example we have ever had.
Turns out we aren’t all desperate for attention, we just want to keep in touch.
As for me? Facebook has always creeped me out, especially when they added the photo album feature. However with the API I was starting to become a fan again. Now, not so much.
What do you guys think? Do you care, or is everyone just a big baby?
September 7th, 2006 at 12:22 pm
I think everyone is just being a baby. Valleywag brings up the best points here:
http://www.valleywag.com/tech/wsj/wsj-goes-omg-over-facebook-drama-198996.php
September 7th, 2006 at 1:45 pm
Part of what made facebook so great was its simplicity of design. The new changes remove that advantage. And of course people are concerned about privacy. But will large numbers of college students stop using facebook because of the changes? I don’t know. We’ll see. I’m sad, though, that Facebook isn’t listening to its users. Now they’re just another corporation.
September 7th, 2006 at 7:47 pm
I’ll tell you one thing, I’m all facebook’d out.
September 7th, 2006 at 7:51 pm
I agree with Aberwulf on the simplicity point. To be honest, yes the news feed/mini-feed does invade on privacy a bit (I feel creepy knowing when my friends are breaking up and making up) but at the same time it really has changed the way I check Facebook in terms of groups and events.
If the news feed/mini-feed is here to stay, then I think there should be a couple small changes to its functions. For example, users should definitely be able to “opt out” as one of the privacy options. Another idea would be to limit what the feeds show, like not showing when so-and-so writes on someone else’s wall, but maybe showing events they’re going to. Or maybe even letting users choose what they’re going to allow to be put on that feed.
At the same time I think they’re questioning my intelligence when they say this news feed is “a personalized list of news stories”.
September 7th, 2006 at 10:50 pm
This really has nothing to do with Privacy. Everything in the feed is already available to the public. the feed is just aggregating the activities. i think its pretty damn cool to see everything the goes on.
And if youre so upset with facebook why are you going to create a group ON facebook and drive more traffic to it. what a terrible idea for a petition. In a few weeks everyone will be over this.
September 7th, 2006 at 11:03 pm
I don’t think the changes are all that bad- I wrote up my thoughts on my site, here. Mark Zuckerberg, creator of Facebook, also wrote about the response in the Facebook blog, here. I think people are over reacting. The new features are still kind of in “Beta” and soon enough you will probably be able to turn those feeds off.
September 7th, 2006 at 11:06 pm
PS- Doesn’t ValleyWag look strikingly like Lifehacker? Esp. the icons…
September 8th, 2006 at 1:00 am
“Everything in the feed is already available to the public.”
What about when people REMOVE things from their profile? Sure, I guess you knew when people’s profiles were updated and if you had a copy of the information somewhere you could check it, but cmon. I feel that if they simply removed “Eric removed “New Kids On The Block” from his Favorite Music” it would be a lot better.
September 8th, 2006 at 8:13 am
Daniel I think you’re right, most of that stuff is public. But there was some security in knowing that anyone who wanted to know anything about you had to at least do the work of clicking through your profile.
@joe Lifehacker and Vallywag are both owned by gawker media… I think.
September 8th, 2006 at 8:27 am
Ooops- Yes…they are. Sorry!
September 9th, 2006 at 10:42 pm
They have been coding in privacy settings…you should be able to remove everything from showing up in your news feed now.
-Grant