Student frustrations concerning the new changes to Facebook.com have caused Facebook's creator to add increased privacy settings.
At midnight Sept. 4, Facebook.com members noticed a more public display of personal information with the new News Feed and Mini-News Feed features. The News Feed feature displays new information a user posts about himself in a news headline format for all of his network friends to view. Mini-News Feed highlights the changes users make on their own profiles.
These new features, created by founder Mark Zuckerberg, were negatively received among the 9.5 million Facebook users.
The News Feed features were so unpopular that over half a million "anti-News Feed" Facebook groups were created. In addition, 700,000 users signed an online petition protesting the changes, according to The New York Times.
Naomi Baron, an AU linguistics professor and expert on digital communication, said no one has acknowledged that the site is the property of Zuckerberg and his venture capitalists. Users must realize Facebook is not their own property but is part of a money-making enterprise, she said.
"There is a perception that ... Facebook is their own, and this perception comes from free usage of other sites on the Internet," Baron said. "I suspect Zuckerberg knew exactly what he was doing. It's publicity."
Zuckerberg wanted to shake things up, knowing that school was starting for a lot of high school and college students and he would get more viewers, she said. He knew that he makes more money from selling ads, and he only sells ads by increasing the number of people viewing them.
"If you don't make it new, people will get bored," Baron said.
Zuckerberg simply took what was already accessible and made it more visible, she said.
"It's amazing the number of people who do not know their privacy settings," Baron said.
The News Feed collects information already made visible on users' pages. There were privacy settings established on Facebook that at the strictest level did not allow information to be circulated on the News Feed. However, these settings were not easily visible, according to The Washington Post.
Caitlin Aber, a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences, was one of many users who disliked the News Feed.
"I thought they were confusing and intrusive," she said. "I think the News Feed brought too much attention to personal information that would've been changed on Facebook, but you wouldn't have necessarily noticed it right away."
Laiah Idelson, a sophomore in CAS, also was not a fan of the News Feed.
"I thought it was overwhelming and that it gave it no privacy, and I felt like Big Brother," Idelson said.
Zuckerberg wrote a letter Sept. 8 to all Facebook users about the negative feedback he received about the new features.
"We really messed this one up. ... We did a bad job explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them," Zuckerberg wrote.
The improved privacy settings allow users to block information that goes onto the News Feed and Mini-News Feed features, as well as list the types of actions Facebook will never let another user know about, such as friend removals or rejections, pokes, messages and profiles users view.
Additions to Facebook features are no new phenomenon. In the past few months, Facebook made several major changes. These include the Profile Badge, which allows students to share an abbreviated version of their Facebook profile on other sites; a Notes feature, which functions as a blog; a Status feature, which allows students to let others know what they are currently doing; a Global Network, which lets people from different networks join the same groups and events; and Election 2006 groups, which serve as places for users to declare support for different candidates or political issues.
Ultimately, Baron said she appreciates the easy communication and networking tools Facebook has to offer, but she warned of the potential security threats Facebook poses if not used properly.
"Students need to be very aware that they are using a tool created by someone else, not their own, as a social service and must be aware that others can view it," Baron said.
Abigail DeRoberts and Joel Van Wagnen contributed to this report.
