NEW YORK -- The operators of the online hangout Facebook wanted to help users save time by highli... Facebook feature draws com
NEW YORK -- The operators of the online hangout Facebook wanted to help users save time by highlighting changes their friends make to their personal profile pages. Instead, the new feature has drawn complaints from thousands of its users and even threats of a boycott.
The backlash is over Facebook's decision this week to deliver automated, customized alerts known as News Feeds about a user's closest friends, classmates and colleagues. Users who log on might instantly find out that someone they know has joined a new social group, posted more photos or begun dating their best friend.
"It's making it so much easier for people who want to do stalking to stalk," said Facebook user Igor Hiller, 17, a freshman at University of California at Santa Barbara. "Facebook users really think Facebook is becoming the Big Brother of the Internet recording every single move."
A protest group created on the site, Students Against Facebook News Feeds, had more than 600,000 members by Thursday, and more than 80,000 people had electronically endorsed a petition against the feature. A Web journal has even been set up calling for users to boycott the site on Tuesday, a week after the feature's debut.
A user's profile details, including contact information, relationship status and hobbies, are generally hidden from others unless they are already part of that user's network of friends or institution, such as a college.
In addition, users have the option of hiding specific details from certain users, even ones already designated as friends -- choosing, for instance, to show photos to college buddies but not to co-workers.
To join, one must prove membership in an existing network using an e-mail address from a college, a high school or selected companies and organizations. As a result, Facebook has fewer than 10 million registered users, compared with some 108 million at News Corp.'s MySpace.
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."
Chris Hughes, co-founder of the two-year-old, privately held company based in Palo Alto, said Facebook's software analyzes such factors as how often one communicates with a friend or views that friend's profile in determining whom a user deems most important.
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