Hundreds of thousands of Facebook users are pissed off (really, read this link... follow the comments... lots of emotion and energy) by two new features it added to the site two days ago: News Feeds and mini-Feeds. The features were designed to aggregate and deliver information users publish about themselves to other users in their network.

So three things about this mess:

1. Being that college students are already publishing this information to the internet, I am surprised that they are upset at Facebook for making it easier and faster for the information to spread. They are saying that it is an invasion of their privacy. Here is a news flash: once information is published on the web it is no longer private. Besides, if they really wanted they could make their profiles private, and avoid this entire mess altogether. What gives?

2. Facebook users are mobilizing against Facebook. Enough to trigger a response from Mark Zuckerberg, founder and Chief Executive. He said “Calm Down. Breathe. We hear you.” Yeah, you better hear them after receiving hundreds of thousands of digital signatures demanding they turn off the new features. What’s amazing about this is that users are so well connected and organized that they can form and deliver a powerful and unified response. They organized a boycott! A boycott, for god’s sake! When was the last time we saw this many people in this age group organize over night? Maybe never, I don’t know… I am juts blown away by the level of sophistication and organization this network has demonstrated. And not using Facebook hurts their main source of revenue: selling ads. So the user network is hitting Facebook right where it hurts, it got their attention and now they are listening.

3. Yes, NOW they are listening. They could have saved themselves a lot of trouble if they had just done a little market research. A little focus group. Fine, that takes time and money, so read the news and learn from other people’s mistakes. Friendster got a lot of lip last year when they rolled out a feature that told users when other people were snooping. They have learned their lesson – now they hold focus groups before they spend time and money developing “enhancements.” Hopefully, Facebook has also learned their lesson.

All in all very interesting stuff. Users thinking that there is privacy on the web, mass organized social mobilization, and a company rolling out a feature without checking to see if people actually wanted it.

I love the internet.

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posted by Andres Zapata @ 1:13 PM