The Trouble With Facebook

Never has the Web 2.0 community been in such a fury. Facebook, the homegrown, elegant alternative to such shitshows as Friendster and MySpace has made the hideous mistake of including an RSS feed on the front page of everything your "friends" have recently done. The elegant design looks cluttered, the move reeks of corporate misstepping, and the beautiful illusion of privacy facebook once gave (by not allowing you to click on the profiles of people you aren't in a network with) is shattered. The verdict is more unanimous than a Cuban election: The feed sucks.

But why does the feed suck? Sure, the clutter may be objectively unsightly, but it's not like any information is there that wasn't available before. Why does everyone complain about privacy? Well, in my opinion, it's because privacy is less about what information people can know and more about how that information is presented, whether it's presented with the respect it deserves. You can easily invision situations, I'm sure, where you know gossip, and you can tell all of your friends individually, but it would be tactless to tell them en masse. The same information gets conveyed, but the information seems graver and more important when it's presented personally. It actually feels like privacy was maintained, at least partially because the people you've told likely don't feel they can gab about the gossip to each other. The new facebook announces all information blaringly. Alex Kelston has made a slightly brilliant mockery of this by changing his marital status to every possibility over the last day. But on a serious note, if my friends break up, and they change their profiles, I don't think they'd want that announced on the facebook home of everyone they barely know. People self-censor. I only look at the profiles of people I'm interested in, and while I don't consider that information confidential, I do consider it personal. And worthy of some modicum of respect.

Also, there's an "opt out" box. The opt out box is the worst part of this whole experiment. First of all, it smells like the Friendster travesty where they created a new feature where you could see who looked at your profile. People didn't even realize this until they had done some stalking and later found out the person they stalked knew of their visit. You could opt out of this (and be unable to see who viewed your profile), but everyone was automatically set to the less private setting. This made people, especially me, feel violated. While this move isn't nearly as bad (again, it doesn't make new information available), it does just feel like privacy is something you have to opt into, not assume.

Also, if people opt out, the feed becomes totally useless. Everyone will still go to each section to see who's updated their profiles. They're not going to remember who opted in and who didn't, so they'll just check on people they're interested in. No time is saved. Frankly, I like to go to each section. Facebook is a time waster...extreme efficiency isn't a plus. The site runs cleanly, and that's what I want. MySpacesque technical disaster isn't a good thing, but a few buttons can be nice.

On the other hand, I kind of like the mini feeds. They shouldn't be in people's profiles, that just looks ugly, but they'd be nice on the sidebar to show us what people we're already stalking have updated.

All right, I'm done ranting for the night. No spell check or grammar check this evening. Later, kids.