Change of topic

I've been talking about heavy stuff lately.

So instead let's talk about that directly affects the lives of college students.  Like Facebook.

So how about that new Facebook setup?  I don't like it, and I haven't met any of my Facebook friends who approve of it.  It's just too weird.  It's like each of your friends having their own personal paparrazo track their every move and report it to the Facebook newspaper.  It's not just that other people see what you're doing, it's also that it's (I think) a bit embarrassing to see every single thing about them, even of things that are public on Facebook.  People are now weirded out the way people in my grandmother's small town used to be weirded out when the local newspaper reported on what parties people went to, who came to visit, and other mundane details of their life.

But I think the real problem isn't the information itself.  There were some things I liked.  For instance, getting told what part of the profile made a profile be listed as updated.

The real problem, I think, is that the Facebook people took power away from the user, and we don't like that.  So, one solution that we would be happy with would be to get rid of the new functions and make it the way it used to be, which we were perfectly happy with.  But I don't think they really want to do that, since they clearly think this is a good idea.  So if they want to save it, I have a suggestion.  Are you listening, Facebook staff?

Empower us.

Give us options about the feeds.  How about this:

In addition to the privacy options screen, have a feeds options screen.  In the first half, you would get to choose what types of things you would allow feeds to be sent out about you - pictures, parties, various actions.  In the second half, you would select what things about your friends (maybe separate options for each friend?) you wanted to receive feeds about.

If the Facebook people did that, I think the new setup would go from being very unpopular to very popular.