Recently, the popular social networking site unveiled plans for wider membership. Currently, users need an approved email address from a school, military, or company network, but soon Facebook will launch networks for 500 geographic locations in the United States and abroad, and allow anyone to join. According to company spokeswoman Melanie Deitche, no date is set for the expanded registration.
Facebook just faced backlash from numerous users after unannounced upgrades, News Feed and Mini-Feed, were introduced last week. News Feed instantly tracks activities of a user's online friends, ranging from changes in relationship status to added photos to wall comments. Mini-Feed appears on individuals' profiles and highlights recent social activity.
In response, students created groups against the new additions. The largest, Students Against Facebook News Feed, has over 740,000 members. Students objecting to News Feed claimed that it facilitated online stalking.
Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg issued an apology. He said in an open letter to members, "We really messed this one up. When we launched News Feed and Mini-Feed we were trying to provide you with a stream of information about your social world. Instead, we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them."
In response to complaints, Facebook created better privacy controls. According to the letter, the new privacy controls allow students to choose the content of their Mini-Feed and their friends' News Feeds. Users can choose not to have News Feed report their activity when they remove profile information, write a wall post, comment on a note, comment on a photo, post on a discussion board, add a friend or leave a group or network. However, Facebook states that News Feed may still publish stories about information added to a profile, photos uploaded, groups joined or created, events created or attended, networks joined and status updates.
Further, though members can choose to limit what is published about themselves, they cannot unsubscribe from News Feed's endless stream of what their acquaintances have done. Information that may have previously been hard to find is now made readily available, in headline news format, and time-stamped.
Though Facebook may continue to make new changes to News Feed's appearance and operation, there are no plans for the feature to be eliminated. "We're making changes because we feel it's important to react to this quickly," Zuckerberg said. "But we think it's a good product, and we're not taking it down."
Students expressed mixed views regarding the issues. "Not only is it creepy to know that a lot of people on Facebook instantly know my actions in this day of Internet stalking, I really don't care that someone who I had a class with sophomore year of high school confirmed the friendship of someone that I don't know at their university," said Victoria Rduch '09. "That's just needless clutter."
Eunice Ko '09 had a different perspective. She said, "News Feed can be an effective tool. You can let your friends know something en masse, while only saying it once."
Facebook also has a Facebook Development Platform. The Facebook Development Platform lets product developers create applications utilizing data from Facebook. It can be found by going to privacy settings. However, it's automatically set to give information out, with the exception of contact information. The Facebook Site Information may include, without limitation, the following information: your name, your profile picture, your gender, your birthday, your hometown location, your current location, your political view, your activities, your interests, your musical preferences, television shows in which you are interested, movies in which you are interested, books in which you are interested, your favorite quotes, the text of your "About Me" section, your relationship status, your dating interests, your relationship interests and an encrypted user I.D. associated with your significant other's Facebook Site profile. The list goes on and on. If permission is not revoked, users' information is given to product developers.