New York The operators of the online hangout Facebook wanted to help users save time by highlight... New Facebook feature draws

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.

The backlash is over Facebook's decision to deliver automated, customized alerts known as News Feeds about a user's friends, classmates and colleagues. Users who log on might instantly learn that someone they know has joined a new social group, posted more photos or begun dating their best friend.

"You went a bit too far this time, facebook," read an introductory message for Students against Facebook News Feeds, a protest group created on the site. "Very few of us want everyone automatically knowing what we update. . . . News Feed is just too creepy, too stalker-esque, and a feature that has to go."

The group had more than 550,000 members by Thursday, and more than 80,000 people had electronically endorsed a petition against the feature. A Web journal has been set up calling for a boycott of the site Tuesday, a week after its debut.

"Anytime you're confronted with new information about yourself in a public place, it's surprising," said Andrea Forte, 32, a Facebook user and Georgia Tech doctoral candidate who studies online communities. "My initial reaction was mild dismay."

A user's profile details, including contact information, relationship status and hobbies, are generally hidden from others unless they are part of that user's institution, such as a college, or network of friends.

To join, one must prove membership in a 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."

The safeguards, expected as soon as today, would let users block from feeds entire categories such as changes to the groups they belong to while still allowing people to observe such changes by visiting the profile page. Before, a user had to remove items one at a time from their personal feeds.

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