In case you didn't read the story, this title isn't accurate. ReadWriteWeb printed a retraction: Messages for those members with profiles that are already public will become public. Everyone else will have the option of making their statuses public.
In my little corner of FB people are already reporting seeing things that they never did before (e.g. status updates and photos from cow-orkers). If FB screw this up there will be a huge backlash.
If FB screws this up there will be a huge backlash for a few weeks, then FB will apologize. FB screws up with some regularity, but they check themselves quickly afterwards.
It's exasperating to see Facebook flailing about like this. A corner of the Internet where there is no anonymity and you only get what you opt into all my intuition says could be an incredibly valuable thing. FB essentially solved the spam problem for example (app invites notwithstanding) - something not even Gmail has managed. They can do things with photos Flickr can only dream of, since Flickr can't assume that the people in the photos will be members. Same with events. They could be sewing up all sorts of commercial arrangements here. If I create a LAN party event FB should be handling ordering pizza through Papa John's website (and taking a cut). If I create a group trip event FB should be partnering with travel companies, cinemas, everything.
Instead they're dumbing everything down to become what exactly, a lamer Twitter than Twitter itself?
I'm increasingly annoyed by Facebook's flailing about with its business model, and also annoyed by the large number of network errors I've seen on it in the last forty-eight hours.
The retraction seems to be saying Facebook will make it obvious to new users just how privacy works. I've found that my friends tend to follow those notices, somewhat surprisingly. Facebook will let people know what's going on once it's happening, because you're right - a lot of people do care about privacy.
I don't see Facebook's going public as a bad thing, as long as it's not a mandatory change. Their feed system certainly works publicly: It's much more involved than Twitter, and it supports a lot of things people would use other sites for. I use it instead of Flickr for public photos. I'm thinking of switching my Vimeo videos over so I can close my Vimeo account and run most of my online activities from one place. I like writing private friend-based notes, but if I didn't then Facebook notes would make for an attractively minimal solution.
Facebook's been gradually simplifying itself. I don't see how it's dumbing down when they've been adding features rather than taking them away. The new live feed is incredible, for instance.
The new live feed is a pain. Why should I have to block every damn application individually? I want to see 3 things: status, events, photos and that's it. In fact that and messages is all I want from FB, I shouldn't even need to be aware of any of the crap.
So you're really happy that Facebook offers right-off-the-bat filters for all three of those things, right? Because that solves your problem without your ever having to worry about seeing the other things.
I've said it elsewhere here before, but if there's one thing I can say for certain, it's that you're not going to beat Twitter (or any other dead-simple niche service) by trying to be everything to everyone. I am certainly painting in broad strokes here, but this feels a little Microsoft-y to me.
Normally I'd agree with you. In Facebook's case, I'll make the argument that Facebook's only trying to do a single thing, but that single thing is so ambitious that they're justified in taking this move.
The goal of Facebook is to let people make a profile of themselves online and keep in touch with friends. That's a widespread, two-pronged goal. Way back before the last two redesigns, Facebook focused a lot on the profile part of the equation. That's when they had the two-column approach with no theming whatsoever. Then they added apps and profiles became overspammed, and they made the slow switch over to the feed system. In the last few months, they've been adding public profile features, without sacrificing their original intent whatsoever. That's impressive. It means that my family can maintain its closed Facebook connections, but my public-minded friends can go public and not have to worry about managing other web sites. Furthermore, the options are granular, meaning you can make parts of you public and keep other parts private. I refuse to friend family members, but I can give them public photo links so they can still be involved in my goings-on. It's a terrific solution.
I have to wonder if all of the "Facebook=Twitter" critics use Facebook at all, because it's the most deluded thing I've heard. People are fucking mental if they think Facebook's trying to supplant Twitter. It's taking some pages out of their book, absolutely, but if you can mimic a site without removing any functionality then you're doing something good. Now, my Facebook feed isn't a bunch of 140-character updates. People post links and photos and videos and they all show up. Any post can spark a conversation. Whereas on Twitter I post something into a void, on Facebook friends comment on my status updates. Conversations begin. Furthermore, because Facebook treats a user's wall like a continuous stream, if I post something to a friend's wall, all our friends see it. I've actually had friends meet up and become friends through talking on a post on my wall, which is one of those things where you can't help but think "Wow, this is really cool".
Facebook won't beat Twitter where Twitter reigns supreme. But they'll add Twitter-like features and make their users happier, and less likely to switch over to using other services.
Oh good, a way to make it so people don't have to hack me and now everyone can see my details, well if I set it that way... Interesting way to deal with information being available, let your users THINK they want it. Then you don't have to fix anything.
We have identified this bug and closed the loophole. We don’t have any evidence to suggest that it was ever exploited for malicious purposes.
Yeah, it's not like Facebook already solved the problem. It's fun thinking of them as utter incompetents who don't spend years executing very subtle redesigns without alienating their hundred million users, because they haven't been radically changing the site since it first launched.
I agree, when private information is given to somebody else, you cannot count it will stay private forever. The company can be sold, governments can ask for the data, a cracker can take it. So, a good recommendation is to act as Facebook updates are public, even if they are not.
looks like you're new around here. to avoid the downmodding you just got in the future: don't add signatures to your comments, and don't try to use HTML.
