Facebook Blackout Lacks Punch

The Facebook Blackout of 2008 has begun. More than 1.3 million of Facebook's 120 million active users pledged to boycott the site for twenty-four (24) hours beginning at 12:00 PM Eastern Time today. The boycott, organized by disgruntled user Boris Kelevra (Paris, France), aims to force Facebook into reverting to its old design through the loss of advertising revenues otherwise generated by boycott participants. In addition to the 1.3 million known participants, nearly 1.5 million users "may" participate in the boycott.

Word of the protest spread through use of an open Facebook event invitation, which any user may share with their Facebook Friends. Per the Invitation:

"Friends account deleted, Limited in sending message or poking, stupid new layout ! Administrators don't care about what we think ! But what will happen if we all decide to stay off of facebook for 1 day !"

Boycotters Strike Back

On July 21, Facebook rolled out a redesign of the site, based on feedback from 100,000 users (The Facebook Blog). The redesign was aimed at making it easier for users to access the content they want most while improving site speed. Among the most visible changes was the categorical division of a user's Profile page into tabbed pages, as opposed to having every type of media an individual uses on the site awkwardly laid out on one page.

The new design was immediately hit by a backlash of users who were surprised by the extent of the changes. Two of the redesign protest groups on Facebook currently have nearly 4.5 million members collectively. Among other complaints are that the privacy settings are not clear or strict enough, so that a user's information may be shared with unknown parties without the user's knowledge.

Majority Of Users Generally Satisfied with Facebook

Many times more users than boycott participants are logging on today. According to the boycott invitation, ore than 4 million users refused the invitation to boycott, with another 3 million who received the invitation but did not reply. This suggests that the majority of users generally like the current Facebook design or that they do not believe a boycott will be successful. (All told, users who received the invitation only amount to approximately 10% of the total Facebook population.)

The Facebook Forums suggest that the former is more applicable. Under the site's Facebook fanpage "FACEBOOK BLACKOUT" forum, several users express their satisfaction with the service. Canadian Lauren M. uses the service to keep in touch with distant relatives. Rosemary C. (Washington, DC) noted that that are plenty of similar services available on the Web for those who don't like the service, and points out the setting edits users can make to resolve most of the complaints about Facebook made on the Forum. According to Akeno B.: "Im alright with this new facebook. Actually I didn't really liked the old version. This new version is great."

The redesign is highly customizable, with users able to edit settings for what type of content they want to populate the News feed and how often. The News feed aggregates updated information from Friends profiles in much the same was as an RSS feed, but the content is more selective (based on the user's settings) and comes from as many sources as a user has Friends.

The majority of my own Facebook friends had either not heard about the boycott or could care less about it, with a minority participating.

Ramifications for Facebook and Future Protests

It is unclear at this time whether Facebook will make any changes due to the boycott. However, an exchange on Yahoo! Answers suggests that the protest is having an impact. In response to the question "Isn't this "Facebook Blackout" thing ridiculous?", user "Facebook" replied: "Actually thousands of people are going to the "facebook blackout" to try to get the old facebook back. What people dont know is that you can go back to it by clicking settings. And this WILL have a major impact on Facebook. It [will] cause us to lose lots of money."

A second protest event on Facebook is scheduled for January 9 through January 12, 2009.

Sources:

"FACEBOOK BLACKOUT Discussion Board." Facebook.

"Isn't this 'Facebook Blackout' thing ridiculous?" Yahoo! Answers.

Mark Slee, "Check out the new Facebook." The Facebook Blog.

"Press Room." Facebook.