Sep 9, 2006
Facebook “features” modified; problems remain
I am back at school now, and will try to be writing as much as I can without unduly jeopardizing my college process for lack of studying. Thanks for your continued readership. (At this rate, my Google Ads will buy me half a textbook by the time I’m a sophomore in college, which is better than nothing!)
I have never been particularly fond of Mark Zuckerberg’s online stalking machine, nor has his creation made me particularly proud to call him a fellow Exonian. At the same time I knew that those among us who are apt to be “Facebook creeping” had to invest some serious effort into their unhealthy tracking of their peers. It was comforting to know that in addition to future restraining orders, these creeps would have carpal tunnel to enjoy in the future.
Then Zuckerberg went along and, without any community input or consultation, implemented a feature which made large amounts of information disturbingly available in one convenient fashion. It is true that this does not represent a loss of privacy because no new information is being pushed to other Facebook users, but it deviated from the past in that Facebook was brazenly enabling this sort of activity.
Would it have killed Facebook to do a little beta testing? That’s the hallmark of a hot Web 2.0 product, anyways.
But that should be old hat to most of my readers by now. Then again, the stalker-friendly UI change wasn’t all that shocking to me since it had already existed (in a smoother and scarier implementation) in the form of the firefox plugin Facebook Stalker. Thanks to College v2.0 for that heads up on FBstalker and other fun extensions. .I can think of no better way to build healthy relationships…
I read and heard about all this “controversy” without looking at it myself until yesterday. It went up on a Tuesday, which is when many new things come out, like new DVDs. Except unlike freshly minted special-feature packing DVDs, this was terrible. Everyone from the A-list bloggers (see: Scoblelizer, TechCrunch) to the many hundreds upon hundreds of thousands (possibly soon ‘millions’) of facebook users who protested offered at least some half-decent advice, perhaps only half of which Mark and his band of merry men are actually taking into consideration.
“But Facebook added privacy controls! What’s the issue?” Here’s my objection to the implied “fixes” to facebook’s not-so-little faux pas: They don’t really fix anything. They just partially mask the existence of these insidious privacy-eroding features, keeping them out of mind (but still on by default) such that the community might accept them and then move on. Ryan Kellett seemed to like them from day one; maybe he has someone he’d like to stalk? I can’t vouch for him, but speaking for myself and the swarming masses who share my opinion on this matter, we’re not fans.
There has been much banter about the market value of Facebook, and recently some discussion about how this terrific gaffe of Zuckerberg’s might have shaved off a good deal of that property’s value to would-be purchasers. What has been pointed out elsewhere, but which I will come back to again, is that this just goes to show how fickle the users of social networking sites can be. One day they are all on Friendster, the next day they’re friending you on MySpace instead. Facebook has lost some political capital with this, and I’ll keep watching to see how this plays itself out. Sure, they replied to community demands… basically. It’s not over yet.
One last aside: There is apparently a nearly-live counter of how many users are in that “fix facebook rawr” group. It’s available here from Stalker City. (via Digg)
No, I don’t necessarily have anyone to stalk… but you’re absolutely correct in saying that I did like the features from Day One. To me, Facebook is like a contact management program, one of the country’s largest directories with accurate information. Any contact management program worth its salt allows users to easily stay on top of a lot of contacts. Facebook’s latest features do just that. I surely don’t want to know about every little thing so I advocated for customization and control of feeds. To an admittedly small extent, that is what was provided by Facebook via Zuckerberg’s apology and privacy changes. Certainly I would invite even more control over the settings (implementing largely what has been said on the blogosphere) and, of course, having the feeds not come standard.
I think I am somewhat correct at this time in saying that Zuckerberg made the right move with his apology. The majority of Facebook users are going to crawl right back into their little holes and not give a damn. Certainly, the buzz has died down considerably. You, however, know better as to carry on the momentum pushing for changes.
Best,
Ryan