According to today’s Wall Street Journal the changes to Facebook are “here to stay”.
Furthermore, the company seems to have no regret in pissing off most of its user base.
In the article, Facebook spokeswoman Melanie Deitch is quoted as saying, “I don’t believe there’s a privacy issue here”
I think Facebook has lost touch with what their network was all about: connecting college students. I think they assumed that every person on our “friends” list is our best friend and someone who wants full disclosure. While most people personally know most of their “friends”, that doesn’t mean they want every minor detail of their online lives documented and broadcast for all of them to see. Facebook is only a sum of its users. After all, we are the ones creating the content and adding value to the site, they simply give us the soapbox to stand on.
Maybe they are to busy trying to catch up with MySpace, or maybe they forgot how quickly users can pull out of a site when dissatisfied. Maybe the recent ad deal they have struck has them only concerned with adding features and loosing track of what is most important: its users.
The real interesting thing about this is that this is the first test of the Internet generation, our generation. A generation that seemingly, by all other standards, doesn’t give a damn about privacy with the term “MySpace skank” springing to mind. We have been warned about privacy versus freedom of information and for many of us, this is the first real life example we have ever had.
Turns out we aren’t all desperate for attention, we just want to keep in touch.
As for me? Facebook has always creeped me out, especially when they added the photo album feature. However with the API I was starting to become a fan again. Now, not so much.
What do you guys think? Do you care, or is everyone just a big baby?