Facebook site upgrade PISSES OFF Users

[Kristijntje]

...this morning we were shocked and awed by what we saw.

So-and-so is “no longer single.” Someone else removed “the Hubble Telescope” from their interests. Apparently, 10 of my friends “care about the End the Genocide in Darfur campaign issue.” For those who haven’t logged on, not to mention the poor souls who aren’t on Facebook, here’s what the networking site introduced just after midnight, California time, last night: The site now records the minutia of everyone’s moment-by-moment activities on Facebook, and aggregates them all to a handy “News Feed” page, and a “Mini-Feed” on every profile.

A Facebook profile now displays your online social exploits since mid- August. It notes when you wrote on someone’s wall, and when you commented on a photo, along with other new details such as your responses to event invitations, your new friends, and what groups you join. Before, as many of us know, you could write on a wall in relative privacy. It could be a sneaky affair. And commenting on someone else’s photo was something that few would notice. Wall and comment communications, while public, were not advertised...

full article: http://campusprogress.org/features/1138/...poking-you

[mandy]

Update on this story:

Surprised by a rapidly building revolt brewing among its normally loyal customers, social networking site Facebook has agreed to offer users privacy options with its news feed tool.

Introduced just last week, Facebook's news feed provides updates to members every time a change is made to a friend's profile. While it does not reveal any information that was previously unavailable, many members are objecting to the automatic time-stamped updates, especially as there is no manual override option. Groups quickly formed to protest the new feature, with one reportedly growing to 700,000 strong within days.

Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, who initially urged users to stay calm, reversed course and admitted having made a mistake. "We really messed this one up," Zuckerberg said in statement on the site. "We did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them."...

full article: http://ecommercetimes.com/story/YHPDqG8m...sers.xhtml

[mandy]

Lessons to be learned from the Facebook user "revolt".

    * Listen carefully. If you target connected customers, have a mechanism in place to collect feedback before taking major actions (product changes, new product launches, etc.). Don't act in a vacuum. Use social media to engage customers and solicit their feedback. Then, make their input an important part of your strategy.

    * Be ready to act. Social networks and many Web 2.0 tools make it very easy for people to assemble around a cause. Major brands should have a rapid action plan in place to identify and address these situations before they get out of hand. In the old world, this was called public relations or crisis communications. In a new, networked world, it's good community relations.

    * Respect the community. What I wrote in an earlier column about five best practices for marketers who venture into social networking still applies: "Respect the Community. It's a club and you don't really belong. Most social networks aren't about advertising or commerce per se... As an advertiser you're a guest in the club. Understand the environment and respect the unwritten rules: don't intrude on conversations or connections in a way that irritates members; don't divert users from the network to other sites; and don't disguise yourself in a dishonest way."

full article: http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3623393

[stardust]

Without reading any further than what's above, I can intelligently say that this guy should take over meg's job!

[Kristijntje]

A related article:

Earlier this month, the popular social networking site Facebook learned a hard lesson in privacy.  It introduced a new feature called "News Feeds" that shows an aggregation of everything members do on the site...

The outrage was enormous...

Welcome to the complicated and confusing world of privacy in the information age. Facebook didn't think there would be any problem; all it did was take available data and aggregate it in a novel way for what it perceived was its customers' benefit. Facebook members instinctively understood that making this information easier to display was an enormous difference, and that privacy is more about control than about secrecy...

full article: http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,7181...n_index_13