Social networking website Facebook.com is under fire for adding new features that automatically track the moves of its 9 million, mostly student users.
Sara Newman, a junior at the University of Denver, logged on to Facebook this week to find her home page littered with hundreds of messages alerting her to the online activities of hundreds of friends.
Newman, who has 435 “friends” on the site, learned that her friend Whitney isn’t single anymore, and that “Tim and Paula ended their relationship,” according to a posting, complete with an icon of a broken heart.
“I absolutely did not need to know all of this,” said Newman, 20. “I just like to share photos, since the majority of my friends are living abroad.”
Facebook is a 2-year-old Palo Alto, Calif.-based Internet site that allows students to post profiles, photos and commentary about their lives or the lives of their friends. It’s similar to the much larger MySpace.com but differs because networking is limited to schools and universities attended and friends you choose.
Generally, users must have an existing e-mail address ending with .edu to join the site, although some companies and organizations are allowed in. Users set up a profile detailing everything from political interests to dating requirements.
People they declare as friends have access to information, including photos and personal message boards called “walls.”
But the launch Tuesday of two Facebook features, News Feeds and Mini-Feeds, spawned the ire of students nationwide. Instead of users’ having to look through the profiles of friends to find new info, News Feeds inundate users with a list of every action made by every friend in the past 10 days.
Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said Thursday that privacy remains central to the site, but he acknowledged the company misstepped and “failed to communicate to our users actively what it actually meant for them.”
Facebook said it plans to offer additional privacy options, possibly as early as today.
More than 600,000 users have joined a protest group on the site, “Students Against Facebook Feeds.” There’s even a group called “The New Facebook News Feed Is Really Stalker Creepy.” Many threaten to boycott the ad-supported site Tuesday if the company doesn’t make changes.
DU student Kayla Wingard, 18, said the features could spawn stalking and even fights among girls, who might mistake platonic postings and message trading as something more.
Mitchell Gonzales, 18, arrived at DU this week and signed up with Facebook on Thursday.
“It seems like a good way to meet people here at the dorm or social events,” he said. “But I admit, I’ll be using Facebook to look for girls.”
Staff writer Kimberly S. Johnson can be reached at 303-954-1088 or kjohnson@denverpost.com.
