By Athena Kerry
09/09/2006
So, by this time, almost everyone not living under a rock has heard about the Facebook.com debacle that has been raging for the past three days. To summarize:
Facebook is a social networking site, much like myspace.com only less gaudy, which is available to anyone with a school related email address. The vast majority of its users are college students, and few people over the age of 23 have even heard of it â unless they are the usersâ parents. Most users spend a large amount of time monitoring their friendsâ profiles, updating their own profile and many complain that the Facebook is addictive.
Two days ago, Facebook decided to go stalker on us and provide an front-and-center âNews Feedâ that tracked almost every move any of our friends made (itâs uncommon for a user to have fewer than 100 friends, so this makes for a loooong feed). On the feed were included pedantic things like âJohnny has changed his relationship status from âsingleâ to âitâs complicatedââ next to a clipart broken heart, and âJulia has removed âThe Killersâ from her favorite music listâ.
Facebook users rose up in protest, many forming groups (which users can easily join) with titles like âWe Hate The New Facebookâ and âNews Feed Is Creepy.â Others simply refused to update their profile, leave any messages for friends or even log on until the feed was gone. They wanted more privacy.
Today, three days into the fray, the creator of the Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, published an open letter to all users apologizing for the âgoofâ and providing opt-out privileges in usersâ privacy settings. All is supposedly now right with the Facebook world.
On the other hand, News Feed had its benefits. For one thing, I discovered early on that with a little manipulation one could turn it into a great publicity machine. For example, on the first day of the feed, I joined a user group called âStop Illegal Immigration!â Now, pre-feed, a little link would have shown up under my âGroupsâ list featuring the name of the group, in a row alongside the other ten or so group that have my membership. In all probability, nobody would have noticed its appearance.
But with News Feed, my joining this group (a group which has, interestingly enough, over 2,100 student members) was broadcast to all of my hundred or so friends. When they logged on, it said right there âAthena has joined the âStop Illegal Immigration!â groupâ on their front page. It was better even that leaving up an IM away message! It was GREAT! I joined a group supporting Tancredo, I joined a group about Michelle MalkinâŚI was on a roll. And everyone was forced to pay attention, or log off.
They even introduced a new feature that allows users to list their favorite political candidates. If I were to support Kinky Friedman in his gubernatorial run, I could elect to have a banner on my profile saying, in effect, âAthena supports Kinky.â This too, would have been broadcast on the News Feed. My friends could then click on Kinkyâs name while viewing my profile, and be taken to a Facebook page profiling Kinkyâs platform.
Thatâs mostly changed now. They arenât forced to see my affiliations anymore; they can opt out. And in the end, I suppose it is better not to have everyoneâs business cluttering up my profile space. Also, I admit, profile-stalking to the News Feed degree is a little tacky. But today I adjusted my privacy settings to allow broadcasts of all my political activities.
Maybe next weâll even start a VDARE.com group!