Some time ago, facebook.com decided to add a particularly controversial feature called the News Feed. For those of you who don’t know, it takes interesting facebook events and shows them in a chronological list on your home page. For instance, according to my current feed, a friend of mine just added photos, and a kid I haven’t talked to in 3 years just wrote on my wall.
When they-who-run-facebook introduced this feature, everyone was appalled. I’ve decided to emphasize that point slightly with some excerpts:
Here are some facebook groups:
- I HATE the new Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2208835835
- ahhhh facebook sucks: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2208562462
A nice excerpt:
Facebook sucks
I hate this news feed. Tells me that my ex girlfriend is now in another relationship with a guy. Why? I haven’t looked at her profile for over 3 months – I purposely don’t look at her profile – I didn’t need to know this.
http://www.ufck.org/forums/showthread.php?t=204542
This may be my personal favorite:
People threatened, on and off Facebook, to leave the site. The morning after the feed was instituted, not 8 hours after it was put up, the dining halls heard no other conversation. “I hate it” almost always directly preceded “I think I’m going to quit” or “I’m done with Facebook”.
I’m only interested as one of the above-mentioned people, who has not stopped using facebook, but instead used it much more. I’ve always been relatively anti-facebook. I think its a waste of time and I’ve never really cared about gossip etc. That being said, I love the news feed. It tells me everything I need to know, and I no longer need facebook-stalking skills. If someone breaks up, I know about it, and then I may or may not bring it up awkwardly later.
Facebook’s willingness to force the feed on us, and our complete inability to understand what we wanted interest me far more. How could I have been so wrong? How often do I fall for such things? And, lastly, how can I exploit this ridiculous inability in people if I’m starting my own company, maybe a company that people don’t think they need.
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