Facebook changes News Feed after privacy panic

Filed under: Web services, Social Software

Facebook changes News Feed after privacy panic

by Jordan Running Sep 8th 2006

For someone who doesn't have a Facebook account, I've sure been Facebook-obsessed this week. I've been on the edge of my seat watiting to find out what changes, if any, Facebook's developers would make after many users freaked out about their new News Feed and Mini-Feed features. All told, the largest anti-News-Feed group gained more than 700,000 members in about three days, almost 10 percent of Facebook's entire membership, and numbers like that can't be ignored. Today Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a blog post announcing changes that give users more control over what information their friends will see in the News Feed and Mini-Feed. The blog post is almost comically humble, beginning with, "We really messed this one up." He goes on to say, "Somehow we missed this point with Feed and we didn't build in the proper privacy controls right away. This was a big mistake on our part, and I'm sorry for it. But apologizing isn't enough. I wanted to make sure we did something about it, and quickly. So we have been coding nonstop for two days to get you better privacy controls. This new privacy page will allow you to choose which types of stories go into your Mini-Feed and your friends' News Feeds, and it also lists the type of actions Facebook will never let any other person know about." He also thanks all of the vocal users and points out, somewhat indirectly, that it was the News Feed itself that enabled millions of users to find those anti-News-Feed groups in the first place.

I'm glad that this is the route Facebook took. The Feed is ultimately a very useful tool and really sets the site apart from MySpace by putting the emphasis on the user and not pageviews. This granular control of what information is shown in the Feed probably should have been included from the beginning, but Facebook's experience will serve as a learning tool for it and many web sites to come. Hopefully.

Tags: facebook, feed, Mark Zuckerberg, MarkZuckerberg, minifeed, newsfeed, privacy

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Becca said 2:11PM on 9-08-2006

Honestly, the news feeds are just downright annoying. I liked logging in to a very simple home page, and now it's just filled with weird things like someone changing one music preference. I don't need to be informed of that.

Fuzz said 2:50PM on 9-08-2006

Amen, i wanna turn it completly off.

Craig Smikle said 9:58PM on 9-08-2006

I was more for the positive aspects of the Feed than the negative, but I waited for the smart Facebook heads would come out quickly with a solution. This dissapointed me. Users' control is still lacking.. For example note 'Events you attend' are still going to get shown regardless, though so many people had a problem with this. You can choose for stuff you remove from your profile to not be shown, but not certain things you add?
The Feed was a great idea, but Facebook needs to do their homework on how humans really use Facebook. It's difficult to navigate, and it's hard to blame them thoroughly when users had a false sense of privacy and many of them are really just overreacting from the overwhelming information overload.. but they need to do better than >this apology

Padriac said 2:55AM on 9-09-2006

Facebook: here's a great tool that puts all the information we were already offering our users in one, nice, convenient place.

Facebook users; you have made it impossible to maintain a false sense of security! Let us back into our nice, safe fantasy land!

I've said it before and I'll say it again: college kids are idiots. If I were on of the facebook programmers I would be bashing my head on the table over how stupid everyone is acting. If you are afraid of people knowing too much about you don't put a page on the internet that lets everyone know everything you do. All facebook did was make the information you CHOSE to put on the internet, information that was ALREADY on the internet might I add, easier to find. They were doing their job. Not being an idiot is the responsibility of the user.

Featured Time Waster

Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

I have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

View more Time Wasters