One year ago today, a community changed forever.
Unexpected changes brought chaos and confusion to a nation of previously loyal citizens. People cried betrayal against the organized body which they helped form.
Youth were at war with a force so strong they had to use it to fight itself. A trusted source converted to a dark enemy, exposing "secrets" and revealing information previously unearthed.
Well, that's at least what people claimed.
One year ago today, the digital revolt began against Facebook's News Feed.
"OMG," indeed.
News Feed launched on Sept. 5, and the public outcry - and by public, I mean college students, - grew exponentially during the following days. The "Students Against Facebook News Feed" grew to more than 700,000 members by late night Sept. 7. Users threatened to abandon the service if the feed wasn't removed.
It wasn't. We didn't. And here we are 360-some-odd days later more indulged in "what Facebook said," than a 14-year-old girl.
Side note, you might want to remove your "Students Against Facebook News feed" membership now if you forgot to in February when it suddenly became lame. Membership stood at about 257,500 users Wednesday, for those wondering.
Now that the empty threats have resolved to nothing, it's time for part two of "Semi-tragic moments in social networking history."
Ironic that on the year anniversary of News Feed's launch, Facebook unveiled its public search listings feature Wednesday. The feature allows those who are not logged into Facebook to still see a thumbnail and name of any Facebook user.
Yes, there are privacy settings, as Facebook kindly pointed out on a blog post Wednesday (visit blog.facebook.com.). You can disable the public search if you want, according to the blog.
The next paragraph of the blog post reveals the potentially more concerning information. In a few weeks, the post said, the public searches will be Google-able. In fact, they'll be open to all search engines.
Yeah, it sort of got buried under the iPod Touch and lower cost iPhone announcements.
Facebook clearly learned from the News Feed debacle by warning users before releasing the information to search engines. Take notice: if you don't want that information accessible, now would be a good time to change your settings.
With the addition of the public search and this summer's release of Facebook Applications sits a more important warning in the social networking phenomenon.
Don't forget to actually socialize.
With the class of 2007 out the door, no undergraduate class at Ball State University knows college life before Facebook. Sure, this year's seniors and super seniors (and people still trying to finish a degree in less than 10 years) have some recollection. The class of 2008 can recall the first few months of freshman year without Facebook, before it arrived mid-fall. Everyone else, though, is tainted.
Freshman year, I had no way to find out the interests and relationship status of random people in my classes or residence hall ... without, of course, having to ask.
Imagine that.
Write to Dave at heydave@bewilderedsociety.com
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