How Facebook Lost Face

Friday September 08, 2006

"Friend-stalking" via the Internet using an outlet like Facebook.com used to be an art form. However, on Tuesday morning, all the finesse left the game when Facebook made two additions to its site. There’s been hell to pay ever since, and with good reason.

For those of you who don’t visit the site daily (not that I do), Facebook, according to Wikipedia, is a social networking service for high school, college, university, corporate, nonprofit, military and geographic communities. I got to know the site during my senior year of college. Facebook was just coming into its own, with only about 100 colleges “connected.” You could post a photo of yourself, other friends could write on your wall or you could just list random facts about yourself.

This was all very different from other networking sites, and that was the beauty of it. The site catered mostly to college and university students. You still must have an .edu email address to join the network. But maybe the site’s most interesting attribute was that you couldn’t just browse in and look at any page you pleased (as on MySpace.com). No, on Facebook, you would have to become “friends” with someone to see their vital information.

Now, I’m sure you are wondering, what’s all this talk about "stalking" (and I use the term in its lightest sense)? Well, in the old days (as in, days ago) you had to do a lot of cross-referencing on Facebook to truly track – or "stalk" – your friends. Yes, you could select to see friends with "updated" pages. But you weren’t always sure how they had updated them, it wasn’t spelled out for you like it is now. Was it a new picture? Did they add a new favorite music group? Or did someone post a witty comment on their wall? It took time and devotion to the site and to your friends to truly “stalk” them.

However, on Tuesday morning, Facebook’s "facelift" put an end to "friend-stalking" forever. When you log onto the homepage, a new feature called a "News Feed" appears, which is basically an RSS feed. It tracks the actions of every friend you are connected with. It lists information such as if they have a new friend, if a photo of them was tagged, if someone posted on their wall, if they posted new photos or even if they joined a group.

So what’s the problem? Students feel as if this feed is an invasion of privacy. Regardless of the fact that the information was already populating the site for anyone to gather, the possibly fatal mistake is organizing and sorting the data into a feed that exposes all your actions in one pretty package on the homepage.

Why possibly fatal? Because with the new "News Feed" I’ve noticed that all my friends are joining a new group, Students against Facebook News Feed (Official Petition to Facebook). This group was created almost immediately after the new feature launched Tuesday morning. With more than 600,000 members, the backlash site is growing every minute. It gained over 15,000 members in just 20 minutes.

This mass "new media" revolt has become an "old media" sensation, with news stories popping up everywhere from The Washington Post to the front page of our local paper, The News & Observer. Time.com and MSNBC.com have posted articles covering the crisis, as have multiple tech journals and blogs.

Ironically, the strength of the revolt reflects just how rare a success the original Facebook was. As a social networking community, its members are deeply committed and connected to the site. That’s the whole point, and Facebook was the best example.

My thoughts on the uproar: People bond to social networking communities and care intensely about the slightest changes you make. Students and veteran users (like myself) feel betrayed by the Facebook facelift.

At Capstrat, we test Web design and usability, and then test and test again. Did the creators of Facebook test enough? It seems as if they added a tool just for the sake of having a new tool. Whatever the original process, Facebook’s honchos are listening now. The CEO has posted a response to the revolt titled, "Calm Down. Breathe. We Hear You." But it may be too little, too late. Facebook has broken trust.

Finally, stalking someone the old-fashioned way was so much more fun. When all their dirt is on the homepage, it makes the hunt -- searching through their pages and asking to be their friends -- pointless. Facebook, I am sad to say, simplicity was bliss.

Update: It seems Facebook is now trying to mend fences. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerburg posted a letter on the site apologizing and assuring greater privacy controls. Whether it's enough to salvage his audience's broken trust remains to be seen.