September 2006 was a scary time for college students. Our beloved Facebook went and changed the world on us as it introduced its brand spanking new feature, the News Feed.
User reaction was instantaneous and overtly negative. Even Ed Board spoke out about its hatred of the new features. We said that the “drastic new change to our Facebook home page crosses the line between quiet stalking and outright invasion of privacy.”
Sounds intense. But like you, dear readers, we came around. We actually kind of (dare we say it?) love the News Feed. Maybe we’re just resistant to change.
But now Facebook is ready for another go-around. This time, we’re all a little wiser. Facebook has created a group in advance called “Facebook Sneak Preview.” If you haven’t seen it yet, go check it out. It presents all the changes that are in store for us, including pictures of what everything’s going to look like. There are also discussion groups where you (yes, you!) can tell Facebook what you like and dislike about the changes.
There’s nothing drastic like News Feed in store for us this time. Some of the changes include:
1. Mini-Feed will be reduced to only three items and consolidated as part of the basic information. You can see more Mini-Feed by clicking “See more recent activity.” All of the same privacy that applied to Mini-Feed before will apply to recent activity.
2. Each network will be given a network page. The content on each network page will be updated all the time with upcoming events, popular activities, demographic info, discussions and more.
3. The navigational links on the left of every Facebook page will be rearranged according to what students most often use. (We click on “My Profile” eight times a day, but pretty much never click on “My Account.”)
4. Messages will be able to be sent to more than one person. Also, the inbox will be consolidated in that messages on a single thread will be collapsed into one row.
So, basically, Facebook is streamlining itself for our convenience. Nothing scary and definitely nothing that will inspire any Anti-Facebook groups.
Ed Board appreciates Facebook being up front with its user base. It makes us much more open to change. And no matter what, nothing could make any college student stop using this social network. Otherwise, how are we supposed to know what’s going on in our friends’ lives?
