Facebook’s latest feature lets you know everything your friends are doing, minute by minute.
By Graham Webster
Tuesday September 5, 2006
It was a rainy morning in our nation’s capital. The Campus Progress staff was getting ready for the fall. It was only a matter of time before someone opened Facebook. We use it to communicate with a diverse and ever-growing cadre of young people. Our Facebook group, launched over the summer, already has more than 850 members, and many of us have personal accounts. But this morning we were shocked and awed by what we saw.
So-and-so is “no longer single.” Someone else removed “the Hubble Telescope” from their interests. Apparently, 10 of my friends “care about the End the Genocide in Darfur campaign issue.” For those who haven’t logged on, not to mention the poor souls who aren’t on Facebook, here’s what the networking site introduced just after midnight, California time, last night: The site now records the minutia of everyone’s moment-by-moment activities on Facebook, and aggregates them all to a handy “News Feed” page, and a “Mini-Feed” on every profile.
| More on the Facebook Flap |
Now, every time you do anything on Facebook, you issue a bulletin for all of your friends. Now no one will miss the fact that you think you look horrible in a picture, or that you didn’t accept an invitation to someone’s event, or that you wrote what you considered to be a funny item for your list of activities (“Trying not to incriminate myself on facebook to all my future employers”) and then thought better of it 10 minutes later and took it down.
Facebook said the changes were aimed at advancing the core mission of the site, which is to keep people abreast of their friends’ lives. “What we wanted to create is a news ticker, if you will, of the activity of people’s friends in their network,” Facebook’s director of marketing, Melanie Deitch, told CampusProgress.org.
Surprised by the new developments, some users have expressed reservations about the changes. On our blog this morning, I reacted in mock-horror, realizing that my wall posts were broadcast. (I promise I hadn’t actually done anything more controversial than accuse my friend of getting a pet Chinchilla.) Minutes later, a friend alerted me to the “facebook is now creepy” group someone had already started at Pomona College.
Deitch was careful to note that the new features don’t reveal anything new. Rather, they just make the information easier to find. “I think what it raises the awareness of for users is that, in the past I think they’ve felt like even though [some information] was public, that it wasn’t for some reason,” she said.
Indeed, a wall post or a photo comment used to be under the radar—a technically public but still quiet act akin to putting a note on someone’s dorm-room door. Only if someone happened to drop by their wall would they see it. Now, a wall post is more of a bulletin, a public declaration for all to see—something like nailing it to the door of the dining hall.
Some information can be automatically blocked from the feeds. Any restrictions a user applies in his or her privacy settings are honored in the feeds. A user who restricts access to group memberships won’t be exposed on their feed for joining the Progressives for Breakfast Cereal group on their local campus. And any feed item, or “story,” can be removed by simply clicking an “x” button on the profile page.
But somewhere out there, some guy was flirting behind his girlfriend’s back using wall posts or photo comments last week. And if he doesn’t log in before his girlfriend does, we may soon find out from their feed that they are “no longer in a relationship.”
If some users are perturbed, they can complain right to the source. Deitch said Facebook’s customer support team compiles regular reports for the staff on the feedback from their various changes. While she said she hadn’t heard enough to give an assessment about general response already, one friend of mine who raised her concerns got a swift response, which read in part, “We understand that some people are unhappy or concerned about the recent changes to Facebook. ... We think, however, that once you become familiar with the new layout and features, you will find these changes just as useful as past improvements such as Photos, Groups, and the Wall.”
Deitch said some negative response is normal. “Any big changes that we’ve done like this—you know change is hard for anyone,” she said. “But we tend to get some feedback that isn’t exactly glowing.” If response is too negative, however, history shows that Facebook might reverse the change, or at least allow users to opt out of the Feed feature or aspects of it. Some months ago, Deitch said, when Facebook changed the way friends are listed to omit network break-downs, negative user response led them to reverse the change.
Will Facebookers be too creeped out, or will we just move on, stalking, flirting, and procrastinating as usual? It’s too soon to tell. In the mean time, our flirtation will have to go under the social radar. It’s time to get poking!
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Comments
Thank god Graham Webster is on top of things. Generations Defined By Facebook, anyone?
— Nathan E - Sep 5, 07:35 PM - #How could I miss the amazingly huge (33,000 and counting) anti-feeds group started at my alma mater. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2208288769
WOW
— Graham - Sep 5, 09:48 PM - #I think the general trends on the “home” page are okay, and are actually kind of convenient. It is good for casual updates on what other people are doing.
The thing that scares me, though, is each individual user’s “feed,” which lists every single action that they undertake on Facebook. It would be easy to draw negative conclusions from some of them (like declining an invitation to charity events or what have you).
The other problem is that all of the user pages just look really screwed up and cluttered now.
— Nick - Sep 5, 11:30 PM - #Thanks for summing this up. The analogy about writing on someone’s literal wall is an apt one —FB made me feel unreasonable for feeling intruded upon, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why it was intrusive in the first place. after all, i’ve volunteered plenty of personal information to facebook’s series of tubes, enough to intrigue at least amateur stalkers for hours. But somehow, never before have I felt intruded upon or creeped out, because never before was Big Brother passing it all on to the extended family. Before, anyone interested in finding my favorite movies would have to ask for the information (“Top Gun” and “Newsies” make it into the top 5, thanks for asking) instead of getting it shoved in their face.
— Dara - Sep 6, 12:01 AM - #I’m glad to hear another voice asking about this—it raises some interesting questions about the boundaries we are willing to level and the ones we care to keep up—I wouldn’t be suprised to see facebook come up as a case study of changing attitudes about security and privacy many years from now.
The group is up to about 75,000 as of midnight. 75,000 protests in less than 24 hours. Too bad this isn’t for a cause that really matters!
— Andrew - Sep 6, 12:03 AM - #Too few people on Facebook realize how much control they have over the feed. I personally like the change. There need to be more pro-new Facebook groups. I created one a few minutes ago:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2208690799
I like the point in this article that one of the things this does is make people aware of how much information they make readily available to the public, or at least their Facebook friends.
— Becky B. - Sep 6, 12:07 AM - #facebook now sucks
— loe tada - Sep 6, 12:20 AM - #Spot on Graham, this is the uncoolest thing ever.
— Whitney - Sep 6, 12:43 AM - #You went on the world wide web. You joined a site. You disclosed personal information about yourself, no doubt in a lot of detail.
Facebook all of a sudden changes the visibility of some things: your personal life is much more visible.
Why did you do the things you are ashamed of (flirt behind your girlfriend’s back, for instance) in the first place?
Because you thought you could get away with it?
If that’s the reason; and you are now exposed in doing it, that’s your stupid fault.
By simply not doing things you regret in the first place, or doing everything you want and never regretting it, your life is much simpler.
If this were the government, and you were crying foul because sudden public awareness of your life increased; the public would tend to turn around and say “GOOD” – it will keep you honest.
A secret isn’t a secret as soon as you share it – and by doing anything or telling anyone anything using the web or internet, you’ve just shared it.
What did you honestly expect?
— Daniel O'Connor - Sep 6, 12:45 AM - #This is too big of a change right away, maybe if they would have phased this in there wouldn’t be so much of an uproar. Also, did they not do any beta testing with focus groups before pushing this on everyone? Seems like not a smart move at all.
— JB - Sep 6, 12:54 AM - #The new facebook is in bad need of three things:
1. The ability to control what news appears on your homepage
2. The ability to control which friends can see your news
3. A less-ugly layout
That’ll take care of the information-overload and stalking-too-easy complaints.
With those fixed, it’s actually a really interesting feature. It nicely supplants certain blogs—I’m thinking the ‘today I went to the doctor’s then I broke up with my boyfriend lol” variety—making it really easy to keep tabs on the few close friends whose lives you really ARE interested in. I think it’s an improvement.
If you’re a facebook member and want to join the fun:
— Joshua Haas - Sep 6, 03:54 AM - #http://harvard.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2208093952
The new facebook feed thing is just too much. I agree with others who say “It’s supposed to be hard to stalk someone.” In fact that’s the crutch of the issue. As Lessig states in Free Culture (page 277) “your privacy was assured because of an inefficient architecture for gathering data and hence a market constraint (cost) on anyone who wanted to gather that data.” The news feed removes that cost. It doesn’t matter that the data was there already, only someone who really wanted to know what was going on had to look for it.
The other thing about the news feed is that even if you were previously unknown to person, you now know what was removed and that data was previously not exposed.
I previously enjoyed some of the inefficiencies. With the new newsfeed I don’t feel the need to go to my friend’s profiles and check what’s been changed, I can stay on my home and do that. There’s no longer a need for me to spend anytime delving into my friends profiles, and that was part of my enjoyment of facebook
— Andrew Thornton - Sep 6, 05:08 AM - #It amazes me how people get upset that other people can see the information they WILLINGLY give to a website whose entire purpose is to display all of the said information to everyone else. If you don’t want people seeing it, do NOT put it on Facebook! Don’t put down a website for doing exactly what it was designed for and being designed to do so simply and easily. As for the “stalking” issue, if you give someone the information to track you…it is your fault for making it available to anyone who might stalk you.
— Wil - Sep 6, 08:27 AM - #Feeds are absolute shit. I’m simply going to stop posting ANYTHING to Facebook until they get rid of them; I don’t want to deal with it.
For all the unthinking fuckwits who think that it’s ok: imagine if there was a service which allowed you to get all the public record information on any citizen – their taxes paid, Social Security number, county property records, donations to political campaigns, court documents… – those are all public information, and you can go to various goverment offices and get it for anyone if you have several hours to spare. But if you get could get it all just by typing someone’s name in a website, it would massively suck for all of us. Everyone would spy on everyone. Feeds are roughly similar – there is a demonstrable benefit from NOT collecting and centralizing information.
— Rob T - Sep 6, 08:41 AM - #Quit bitching, noobs
— Satan - Sep 6, 08:51 AM - #Its your own dumbass fault Rob T for posting all that shit on facebook, where it immediatly becomes their property, or maybe you havent read the ToS???
— Satan - Sep 6, 09:08 AM - #I’m proud to say I deactivated my account in the name of consumer activism. Joining groups on facebook to protest facebook just seems ridiculous. Send them a message via their “suggestions” tab under the “help” menu… then get the hell off of BigBrother.com.
For those of you who may experience withdrawls or break into uncontrollable sweating and shivers at the thought of such an action: relax. You can always “reactivate” your account to exactly the way it was once they decide to change back from being straight up creepy.
— Ryan W - Sep 6, 09:48 AM - #Its about time they did this! You people MUST REALIZE How much information you are posting! If you think that This is like big brother, then you have no idea how much big brother (or any technocrat) can really do. And yes, if you are applying for a government job, they look everywhere in a background check, EVEN IF YOU DELETE SOMETHING THEY STILL HAVE IT.
Just be smart about your information. Facebook didn’t make it easier for people to get stuff. They are opening your eyes to what you are really putting up there.
— Dan L - Sep 6, 11:10 AM - #you can hide your news feed… whats the problem? just hide it if you dont want poeple to see.
— kip - Sep 6, 11:45 AM - #This isn’t a privacy issue – we are just simply organizing information that is already public anyway. You can still implement privacy by using the privacy page. This is brilliant – I love Facebook.
— Brian J King - Sep 6, 11:54 AM - #The news feed only displays the information you put on this site….. if you feel uncomfortable with other people seeing certain information, don’t post it on this site.
Stop bitching about your privacy. When you joined this site you gave up your right to the privacy of anything you post here. If you really have a problem with it, there are settings that allow you to prevent certain people from viewing information about you.
Obviously none of you knew that.
— ARea - Sep 6, 12:41 PM - #Graham-
superb job on the article, interesting though, i only knew about it because of the news feed. Ironic isn’t it- at the same time i am tempted to follow in my friends footsteps:
Avital Dagan and Jonah Lobe joined the group Kill the Pinko Facebook “News Feed”
... that was actually copied from my news feed
— Hana - Sep 6, 01:10 PM - #For non-facebook users who want to find discussion of this new feature (and can’t look at the discussion in the facebook groups) there is activity at the Facebook discussion room www.talkface.com
— Richard Price - Sep 6, 02:15 PM - #I just wrote up a little script last night that does just that: transforms the News Feed to RSS.
PHP and all the source is there: http://blog.nemik.net/2006/09/06/facebook-news-feed-rss/
— nemik - Sep 6, 02:31 PM - #I don’t like Facebook advertising all of my actions, especially with no warning. The news feed feature caught students off guard, which might make more of us reconsider how easily our privacy can be invaded.
Great article and great timing Graham.
— Nathan D - Sep 6, 03:29 PM - #http://www.middlesell.com/stopitfacebook.php
Thanks everyone.
— Bobby Durrette - Sep 6, 07:46 PM - #I think Nathan has a good point. The problem is that it was really unexpected. It’s like talking out loud to a friend in a classroom and suddenly realizing the whole class is sitting and listening to you. It may not be a private conversation, but it’s still strange to suddenly realize it.
If Facebook had eased it on people, people might have been more accepting.
I still like the feed, though.
— Becky B. - Sep 6, 11:33 PM - #It’s gotten so bad that my spiritual leader joined an anti-feed campaign. How do I know? Oh wait…
— BY - Sep 7, 04:17 AM - #This article was great, but I think there is a more important point to add. Yes, people are upset over the “new” facebook, since it is definitely “stalker” and creepy”; but the real danger is not the amount of information revealed to all of your friends, but the amount of information facebook is obviously capable of collecting—and what they and their investors are doing with it.
— Rose - Sep 7, 05:10 PM - #The new set up is eye opening to people who thought information was less public. It’s a good warning for people who use the site to keep information and comments more private. Having said that, I think the new updates will make people less inclined to use the site. The updates are more of a nuissance than a help. And most people do not want to be updated on every single action taking place, nor do they want every one of their actions to be broadcast. Plus, there is A LOT more negative feedback than Facebook creators are willing to admit.
— LC - Sep 8, 10:20 AM - #I agree that the amount of trackability you describe sounds nasty. However, please consider something when using facebook:
The facebook provider has all this information, and more, in their databases, and they will store it infinitely and exploit it for various social networking analysis programs.
There is a difference between your friends having this information and a company having it. The difference is that the company is not accountable to you for its action and has a malicious intent towards you. It also has the resources to do real harm, not to individuals only, but to all of the users as a group.
In this sense, you should also consider the impact that providing this information to the company has. Take care.
— Marcus Brinkmann - Sep 8, 11:36 AM - #Great article, Graham. And sorry about clogging your feed. I’m so embarrassed… you know I’m an (ex) fb junkie.
— Megan - Sep 9, 10:58 AM - #9MGuum Were a U from?
— zxevil172 - Mar 28, 08:28 AM - #OGGXKP Were a U from?
— zxevil172 - Mar 28, 08:30 AM - #my pics
— mypicst - Apr 12, 07:28 AM - #my pics
— mypicst - Apr 12, 07:28 AM - #