Facebook.com's Mini-Feed Receives Hostile Response

Facebook.com, a website which allows college and high school students to interact online, launched a new feature in early September 2006 that angered many of its loyal users and caused thousands to join groups of opposition.

The Facebook News Mini-Feed, created by the website as a method to keep people informed on the activities of their Facebook "friends," received a mostly negative response within hours of the launch.

Facebook posted an apology statement to users days after the launch of the Mini-Feed. The letter discussed ways to alleviate potential issues people had with the Mini-Feed, but contained little explanation of how to apply the privacy settings the letter referenced. The next day, a more descriptive letter surfaced on Facebook's front page and privacy settings were more easily accessible to most users.

Ultimately, many users felt that the Mini-Feed was an outlet for Big Brother behavior. While all of the information that the Mini-Feed offered was freely available to anyone within a person's network of "friends," users argued that it was oddly creepy to see everything displayed in a summated, ordered fashion.

For instance, if John Smith is in a romantic relationship, he has the option of posting it on his Facebook profile. When that relationship ends, he also has the option of "deleting" the relationship relatively stealthily, without alerting all of his friends. However, when the Mini-Feed was launched, it became clear that anytime this happened, all of John's friends would be alerted that, "John Smith has ended his relationship."

One of the major problems I had with the Mini-Feed was that many people, I have "friends" on Facebook that they hardly know. These are people students ran across on the network, people from unrelated message boards, and students they knew in middle and elementary school. Do users really want their first-grade friends, who would doubtfully be regularly checking my profile, alerted every time they join a group or post a picture?

Another issue with the Mini-Feed was that nothing was ever mentioned about it before it appeared on users' screens. There was no warning whatsoever that a new feature would be added that allowed everyone's information to be more openly shared. However, some disagree that it was a failure entirely. This is evidenced by the fact that it still exists today, only with increasing privacy settings.

"The Mini-Feed was poorly implemented due to not letting people know about it and having privacy settings for it ahead of time," says Alex Johnson, a senior at

Oglethorpe
University

and a Facebook user. "However, it was not a 'failure.' It clearly made people have an easier time on Facebook by seeing things that people updated on one page, instead of having to go through hundreds of friends' profiles."

Others actually like the Facebook Mini-Feed, particularly now that there are greater protections in place for those who do not wish to have all of their Facebook laundry aired aggressively to their entire networks.

"I like the News Feed better now that you can choose to selectively participate," says Sarah Summerfield, also an Oglethorpe senior and a Facebook user. "(And) to all the thoughts that people could 'stalk' you easier now, if you're worried about people stalking you, why are they on your friends list?"

The other main issue with the Mini-Feed was that it was not tested before it appeared on screens. The feature had many kinks to work out, particularly with regard to privacy settings, which would have been easily caught in a platform rollout. While some students like the idea of a Mini-Feed, they were turned off by the ass-to-the-wind execution of the current one.

"(A Mini-Feed) seems like a good idea in theory, but in practice it needs a lot more beta testing," says Jo Johnson, a

Georgia
State

University senior and a Facebook user. "I wouldn't mind if, when people looked at my profile, they saw an update panel which had info on my latest photo updates, blog updates, contact details and so on. But as far as delving into who was friend-ing me or who recently decided to add me to their 'x' list, those seem like details which should only be revealed to me, not the whole of the Facebook community."

Ultimately, the Facebook Mini-Feed may not have deserved the large backlash that it received. However, much of Facebook's problems could have been easily solved by a little testing and some forewarning. If the Facebook team takes anything away from this atrocity, let it be that they are a little wiser, a little more cautious, and a hell of a lot more concerned with their users' potential reactions.