Another Facebook User Revolt is Coming

By Jake • March 4th, 2009 • View Comments

Today, Facebook previewed changes it plans to make to their site next week. There are quite a few:

These changes point to the convergence of the life-streaming model with the social network and to Facebook’s stated goal of being its own Internet within the ‘tubes. When Facebook first introduced the News Feed in 2006, it became the first social network to show a network’s activity in this way.

Since then, Twitter pioneered status (or micro-blogging) allowing the network to tell everyone explicitly what it’s doing, rather than using activity to infer that. Facebook added status shortly thereafter to capture the same activity.

FriendFeed applied the News Feed concept to the entire ‘tubes, but as Facebook has added the ability to share more objects, beyond simply activity contained within Facebook, the News Feed has become increasingly more life stream focused.

So, no big surprises in the home page redesign.

The follow feature, however, sounds like an area for user revolt. Facebook has a very different feel than Twitter or FriendFeed primarily because following (or subscribing) can be asynchronous. Facebook has always enforced that profiles must be real people, probably dating back to its roots as the anti-MySpace; they have frequently enforced this citing it as a violation of their terms.

Now, profiles and pages are merging, and people can follow each other. Sounds a shade like stalking. Because Twitter and others don’t have the rigorous profile requirements, you may not know who is really following you. You’ll know on Facebook though, and that will lead to a whole mess of issues.

This is going to be interesting. Expect a “revolt”, by which I mean a bunch of whining from people. After all, Facebook has a history of upsetting its users. Here’s a brief score card.

It’s actually pretty funny. When I started this list, my viewpoint was that Facebook would (again) run roughshod over its users, as it did in its infancy. However, looking back at the last 18 months, when the most growth has occurred outside the saturated demographics for social networking (talking to you Gen Y), Facebook has actually done a decent job listening to its user base.

Sure, they’ve made mistakes, but they’ve ultimately been responsible for them and have accommodated reasonable requests. Not a bad thing. Although, as a highly visible company (and pop culture punchline), this course of action seems logical.

Anyway. I don’t really think the changes are all that noteworthy, except maybe to early adopters who know Twitter (which is also inching toward mainstream as evidenced by its Daily Show cameo) and FriendFeed and think it matter who was doing what first.

Meh.

The user revolt will be fun to observe. Most interesting will be how mainstream users feel about life-streaming and micro-blogging. The changes to Facebook’s UI will shape the future of the ‘tubes, like it or not.

Find the comments and add your two cents.


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  • I'm waiting for new redesign. I hope it's better.... But nobody know!
    by the way 5,000 friends limit.
    How can I make more friends... 5000?

    Enjoy with it ...facebook ;)
  • One guy with 5,000 friends is Robert Scoble. He's been complaining for years about the limit. It makes sense now that they're adopting a follower model.
  • I already saw the "keep the old homepage" groups there, and the new homepage is not even up yet.
  • Nice, with 175 million users, you're bound to ruffle a few feathers when you make a big change.
  • I have the rare perspective of joining Facebook within the last week, after spending extensive time on FriendFeed. From my perspective, the changes appear to be a good thing, although we'll see what happens as the number of my Facebook friends increases. Perhaps at that point Facebook will steal - I mean implement lists.
  • Steal is a funny word among these companies. Technically, FF stole the News Feed idea and applied it to the 'tubes. They admitted as much when they launched. FB stole status/micro-blogging from Twitter and has been borrowing features from FF too. It's good for users.

    You fit the bill of a user who would like the changes. FB's makeup has changed to skew it toward the less savvy who are likely to freak out when the firehose is turned on, so having controls will be key.

    FB does have friend lists already. They've had that for a while.
  • uvox
    Another - the recently introduced tooltip that says "Write a Comment... " in the Write a Comment textbox that pops up when you actually try to write a comment.
  • That caused a revolt? Sounds like sloppy JS or something overlooked. Is there a 10,000-member, fix the tooltip group :) Wouldn't surprise me.
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