Facebook News Feeds are Maddeningly Addictive
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | September 7, 2006 | Share This
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It’s Day 3 of the Facebook news feed scandal. 598, 857 Facebookers have joined the “Students Against Facebook News Feed” group and 86,585 have signed The Official Anti-Facebook petition. Calling the feeds a violation of privacy, students continue to voice discomfort with the new feature. To quote the “Students Against…” group,
“You went a bit too far this time, Facebook. Very few of us want everyone automatically knowing what we update. We want to feel just a LITTLE bit of privacy, even if it is Facebook. News Feed is just too creepy, too stalker-esque, and a feature that has to go.”
Hundreds of groups have emerged touting similar themes, such as “Friends Don’t Let Friends View MiniFeeds”, “Facebook’s Facelift Creeps Me Out”, “Change Facebook Back” and “Coalition to Stop Facebook, Stalker Edition!” Most students seem upset by the thought that their actions, as recorded by Facebook, will affect their public image. Several have even reported being “dumped by Facebook” when thier significant others changed their status from “in a relationship” to “single”.
In his blog response to the mob, Mark Zuckerberg stood by the new features, arguing that although “stalking isn’t cool, being able to know what’s going on in your friends’ lives is.” Supporting Zuckerberg, several counter groups have appeared to show appreciation for the feeds (see: “Students for the new Facebook” and “The New Facebook is Stalkeriffic”). Other students have created programs to stream the feed through RSS, and despite the outcry, activity on Facebook has surged in the past 48 hours (Maybe that’s because students are protesting by starting groups within Facebook).
Creepy or not, the new Facebook has turned user profiles into points of engagement. For a site that already sees 95% of registered users returning on a daily basis, the feeds give people an incentive (albeit, gossip and stalking) to return to the site more often. This could bring social networking into the realm of email and Instant Messaging, which would be a huge increase of return visitor traffic. Considering the recent ad deal that Facebook signed with MSN, more traffic equals more potential revenue, and for Zuckerberg, that’s incentive enough to keep the feeds.
Topics: Social Media, Technology |