Facebook Alters New Social Network Features After Member Outcry

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on September 8, 2006 - 2:14pm.

Palo Alto, Calif. - Facebook, the second-largest online social network with 9.5 million members, made alterations to new features on the service late Thursday, after more than 600,000 members complained via online petitions. On Tuesday, Facebook introduced a feature called "News Feed" that automatically notified all of a member's friends each time new pictures were added, blog comments posted -- even when a user's relationship status changed. An outcry ensued, from members who deemed the new feature an invasion of privacy. The company on Thursday added the ability to opt out of the News Feed feature entirely, and also to control which profile updates would be visible on friends' pages. "We really messed this one up," Facebook chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post on Friday. "We did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them." The post went on to say the company has been "coding nonstop for two days" to make changes to the News Feed feature that reflect member concerns. "We're making changes because we feel it's important to react to this quickly," Zuckerberg told The Washington Post. "But we think it's a good product, and we're not taking it down."
http://blog.facebook.com
http://tinyurl.com/zlq6k (Washington Post)