Akkam’s Razor

Via Mashable (link):

You’d think with all the controversy over the Facebook news feed and the recent decision to open up the site, Facebook might hold off the new stuff for a while. Not so. A tipster tells me that the company will roll out a new type of advertising on the site in the next few weeks - even worse, these “sponsored stories” will appear in the much-hated news feed.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Recently, Facebook has added an Election section, presumably to provide a platform for civic action as well as generate income from candidates via their purchase of voter profiles and demographic information - ie. users who supported Candidate B also supported Issues X, Y, and Z.

Then to promote it, they turn on the mini-feed, so that when you see a friend join a group that you identify with, you join as well.  An unfortunate consequence is that every single change, addition, or deletion you make on your Facebook profile is also shared with everyone.  Also, by default, everyone in your network can see everything.  The problem here being that the people, previously unrelated, who joined a political group, became part of your network, increasing the number of people who see your profile.  Needless to say, there was quite a bit of discomfort amongst the FB users, eventually causing FB to ammend the feature to provide better control.

Via Techcrunch [link]:

Sometime soon, Facebook will start allowing anyone to join directly into a geographic network, regardless of whether or not they are already a member.

Melanie Deitch, Facebook’s director of marketing, told me today that the feature would be released sometime soon, “probably in the next month, but no firm date has been set”. She also said that there are currently 530 geographic networks, including some non-U.S. areas such as Paris and London.

Facebook finally does the right thing instead of a PR-ish spin telling people that they just don't get it…

An Open Letter from Mark Zuckerberg:

We really messed this one up. When we launched News Feed and Mini-Feed we were trying to provide you with a stream of information about your social world. Instead, we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them. I'd like to try to correct those errors now.

Gotta jot this down quick today, as I'll be unplugged and doing Daddy Daycare, which is  astory not suitable for blogging…

So, as detailed yesterday, Facebook did a Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot, and unveiled a Mini-News Feed which provides you with a convenient digest of all the activities of your friends.  The problem with that being that it provides you with a daily digest of all the activities of all your friends.

I am pleased to have been part of the original blogstorm - I promptly emailed everyone I knew on Facebook around 10am on Tuesday, and I am also pleasantly pleased to see consumer activism being taken up by the Facebook users.

I'm not quite sure how I feel about this.

Facebook got a facelift [rimshot] last night (story with details on Techcrunch).  There are some good changes, notably the ability to collapse sections you don't really care about.  But what is big news is also a little troubling…

• The BE-friending, DE-friending, making and breaking up of relationships
• Adding or Removing Group Membership.
• Changes to your status.
• Additions, deletions, and changes to your books, movies, and TV-Show changes.
• Your RSVPs to Events.

A quick email out to my student staff and the responses tells me that users aren't necessarily aware of the privacy concerns, their implications, and what control they have over them.

Wow.  That is way TMI.  That is pretty scary.  Now to limit myself in using facebook. 

I just looked…that is too creepy.  I wonder if people can still see all that when you block your profile?

I don't like it. Is there a way to prevent your friends from seeing this info?

It looks like a good idea is to restrict everything to friends - it looks like the default is to let Everyone or Friend-of-Friends to see everything. 

Popularity: 19% [?]

"…unless we stop them now!"

-Homer J. Simpson

Facebook has recently announced an elections section, which allows you to pledge your support for candidates and issues.  This is both interesting for political insight and to show you what's important to college attending youth.

This, fortunately, on many issues, this does not bode well for Republicans, as well as incumbents.  For example, a quick back of the envelope calculation on the GOPs hot-button issues reveals the following:

Against Gay Marriage: 374 to 3115

Anti-Immigration: 435 to 198

Hostile to GOP Energy Policy: 1164 to 0 (couldn't find any pro-GOP groups)

Whilst bored one day, I found myself browsing through the various Conservative-slash-Republican Facebook groups. And I spotted something curious…

Popularity: 8% [?]