Facebook's Response to Member backlash

The article, Facebook Learns from It’s Fumble, ” has provided an update to college and high school students around the US regarding the recent Facebook “News Feed” feature. This added feature on September 5, 2006 caused a loud backlash from the social site’s members. Members spoke to the sites founder, Mark Zuckerberg, through feedback and a circulating petition, “Students Against Facebook News Feed.” One state even began to plan a one day boycott to make their voices heard. The biggest issue with existing members was privacy, or lack there of. The “News Feed and Mini-Feed” features invaded privacy by revealing too much information to others was the initial response. Zuckerberg’s response to the uproar is the feature was implemented to centralize existing information to one location.

Facebook since then has been working around the clock to update privacy protections. They listened to what the members wanted. Privacy settings have been put into place which allows a user to choose what items will be included in the “News Feeds”. However, the site has announced that they will not be pulling the newly adapted features. Instead, the site responds, “These are fundamental features in the next evolution of Facebook.” However, the whole experience was not done in vain. Facebook will now be sure to provide more information and testing before it decides to roll out new features.


What is the future of Facebook? Currently, Facebook is beginning to face more competition in the online community web space. Besides the big rival, MySpace.com, more web communities are popping up to offer a level of privacy for members such as CollegeHotList.com. This rival has gained momentum since the Facebook controversy showed itself. Will Facebook continue to provide members the level of privacy and convenience users want or will it be slowly diminished by rivals? Only time will be able to tell.