""I'm so freaked out!""
UW-Madison sophomore Erica Larsen's initial reaction to a new feature of the social networking website Facebook is not atypical. Many Facebook users were surprised by the introduction of the mini-news feed Tuesday, which provides a brief summary of the recent actions by people in your network.
Users can now view when their friends join and leave groups, write messages on their friends' walls, change their relationship statuses and change their profiles.
The profile changes now list verbatim students' Facebook friends edits; if a user deletes ""pina coladas"" from her list of interests and adds ""long walks on the beach,"" her friends will know about it via the news feed.
UW-Madison junior Marissa Floyd also said she did not like the news feed.
""It's more than just a little invasive,"" Floyd said. ""I really don't care what people do every second of their day, and I really hope they don't care what I do every second of my day.""
She said the new feature was a main topic of conversation on campus.
""This was the first day of school, and it was the only thing I heard anyone talking about,"" Floyd said.
Despite the widespread discussion, Floyd said she has not met anyone who likes the new feature.
Larsen said she did not like the feature because it enhanced negative stereotypes attached to Facebook.
""I think this is only adding to its credibility as the ‘stalker network,'"" Larsen said.
UW-Madison journalism professor Robert Drechsel, who specializes in issues involving invasions of privacy, said features like these highlight the need for students to be careful about the Internet.
""People probably have ... regarded these things as perhaps more private than they really are,"" Drechsel said.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on his blog that the feature ""is information people used to dig for on a daily basis, nicely reorganized and summarized so people can learn about the people they care about.""
Facebook Representative ""Brendan"" said in an e-mail that Facebook prides itself on allowing users to completely control the information they share with others.
""Although there is no option to completely turn off Mini-Feed, all users have the option to hide individual stories,"" he said. ""If you select the ‘X' button to the right of any of your own stories, that content will no longer be visible to anyone viewing your Mini-Feed.""
""What is important to remember with all of these features, is that we are not allowing anyone to see anything that they wouldn't normally be allowed to see,"" Brendan continued, listing secret groups and user blocks as features that are still not broadcast to the rest of Facebook.
However according to Drechsel, almost any feature like this could be misused.
""You need to be very, very careful about what you post on these sites,"" he said. ""People need to bring pressure on Facebook itself if they're unhappy with the situation.""
A new Facebook group has been created to bring this pressure. The group, ""Students against Facebook News Feed (Official Petition to Facebook),"" calls the new feature ""too creepy, too stalker-esque,"" and had amassed more than 400,000 supporters as of press time.
But Facebook seems eager to keep the feature, despite the sizable outcry.
""They can do it, you know,"" Floyd said. ""I just wish they wouldn't.""
