Change it back, Facebook! I beg thee.
Facebook should have seen it coming. After all, if you give people a platform to complain about anything, then they'll probably complain about everything, including the platform itself.
To recap: Last week, Facebook revamped its status feed, which now gives users the choice of two filtering options.
The "Live Feed" option opens the floodgates – you'll get all the information you want, and probably some of the information you don't. (We're looking at you, Uncle Henry.) On the other hand, the “News Feed" button gives Facebook permission to chew through the data, and pick out only the stuff it thinks you will like.
So far, so good. Evil! Bad! Horrible! Give me back my old Facebook! Now!
We're only half joking. It took about 10 hours for Facebookers – a notoriously ornery bunch – to lurch into gear. Some people joined groups such as “Change Facebook back to normal” and “Members want the old Facebook format back." Others shouted from their Twitter feeds. And a whole lot of folks did their complaining right here on the Horizons blog.
What did people complain about? Well, a reader named Deanna says she wants things back to the way they were:
There was absolutely nothing wrong with how it was before and it just makes no sense at all as to why they wasted time and money to change it this way. I don’t need to know when my friend Felicia’s friend Astrid (a friend of Felicia’s that I’ve never met) makes friends with Joe Blow! I could care less!
Andrea, on the other hand, noticed a chilling effect on her social life:
Since the fb update, at least one of my friends has lost access to my profile (there may well be more, but I don’t communicate regularly with all my fb friends, so I don’t know). We both checked our settings & she ought to be able to see everything, but - nope. Very annoying, since it was all working ok before.
Eva just wishes the Horizons bloggers would keep their big mouths shut:
I don’t use Facebook and I never will. But unfortunately, I’ve been inundated with these ‘news’ items about FB user complaints for over a year. Is there a way to turn off FB complaints in the news? Could the news pay closer attention to something more important? boo hoo.
Sorry, Eva. In the future, perhaps we can interest you in a "Facebook-free" edition of the daily news? In the meantime, why don't you talk to Dave. Dave is a Facebook Libertarian. He wants freedom from corporate control:
I don’t mind having options, I just wish facebook hadn’t forced everyone to change... Why not let users pick which design they wish to use? It’s all electronic, so it’s not like there’s a lot of wasted paper or resources involved in offering users different display formats.
Finally, we have a reader who identifies him or herself only by the letter "b." "b" hates the changes! "b" wants the old Facebook back. "b" can't wait any longer:
I like the new design more than the old one.
Excuse me? You must have stumbled into the wrong comments section.
Anyway, Facebook hasn't yet responded to the growing flood of comments. That's probably because, as other bloggers have noted, every time Facebook makes a change to its design, users crowd together and scream very loudly at Facebook, usually to no avail. Will this time be different? Only time will tell.
See also:
• Vin Diesel has more Facebook friends than you do.
• What do Lou Ferrigno and Facebook users have in common?
• Why can’t you find Chuck Norris on the Internet?
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