This is the first news post in a while, but I couldn’t help saying something about it. When someone rights the history of the social internet, the events of last week and this week will almost certainly be mentioned. I just couldn't help getting in on the action. I also have an opinion or two. There are a few paragraphs of backstory that I include for those who aren’t all that familiar with the situation, and then after that comes the current stuff. I’ll bold the first word of the current stuff for those that want to skip the backstory.

First, the backstory. Facebook started in 2004 as an online college directory. It started with just a few schools, and gradually spread across to most major 4-year Universities in the US and abroad, and quite a few 2-year universities as well. Originally, the only way to get an account was to provide a valid school e-mail address from a participating school. I joined the site not long after this, early in the summer of 2005. The website over the course of the past year especially has made some pretty major changes, adding and adding to the site (note that I don’t say improving) without cease. There was always a sense of discontent that was vaguely palpable, in discussion among those who had been on facebook for a while. The first change, that none of us protested (or, really, had a reason to protest) was a change in the formatting of a feature called “The Wall,” which at the outset of the site was basically just a blank, editable section of one’s profie where a user’s friends could make changes and ask questions to the user. This was changed to the form of individually boxed comments, mirroring what has always been a feature of the e-demon myspace (I will not link because I will not, even in a minor way, do anything positive for this website), the (negative) comparisons to which are flowing constantly now. We didn’t see it then, but this was the beginning of myspacebook.com.

The addition of a photo option lead to some complaints across campuses, mostly local and out of reach of the ears of the admins of the website. Most of us let it go quietly without a fight, and it’s now pretty much a staple of people’s profiles. The feature was much better handled than its myspace rival (and still is), allowing for proper photo albums with unlimited numbers of photos, as opposed to myspace’s limits on number and sorting of photos. We took it, because it was useful and could still technically be used towards the directory-based ends of facebook, but it was the start of the push towards a social networking site.

The first signs of protest on facebook came with the addition of the status feature, a good half year after the addition of photos. It was my first attempt at changing facebook from within, and most other people’s as well. Facebook added a feature wherein the user could state what they were up to at the moment - essentially, an area of the profile would read “(insert name here) is” and the following text would be editable by the user. This feature could be very useful, but it was clear from the default options they gave us (along with “at work,” “in class,” “at the library,” etc. are “at a party” and “sleeping”) that they meant it to be a social tool (and dangerously close to a stalking aid, as many of the subsequent facebook additions would seem). Within hours, many people I knew (and, I would venture a guess, many people across the site) had their status set as “(insert name here) is wondering why facebook is changing itself” or something similar. This joking protest wasn’t much, and it didn’t change the minds of the admins, nor did the few feedback messages we sent. It went largely unignored, as we expected it to, and now many people just ignore the feature, or they’ve absorbed the feature they way they did with photos.

This next part is where it gets interesting. The next change is something extremely minor, and should never have become what it was. The basic setup of facebook is that friends in your network get their own box, and six of your friends at random from that network appear in a quick link box as well as a link to see them all. Below this is a long list of friends at “other networks,” namely other schools. One day, facebook decided that they would instead make a few links to networks where the user had the most friends, and the rest would be hidden. A few people sent messages to facebook saying we didn’t like it, and voila, it was gone. It came back quietly a few months later, and at no point did the facebook team acknowledge it either as it was taken away or when it came back, but a change had been made.

For a few months after this, nothing happened. And then, on September 5th, facebook introduced the “Facebook Facelift,” a few major changes to the site. The changes included the widely hated “News Feed,” which was basically a list of all changes that had been made by someone you had identified as a friend. This included changes to relationship status, an update on what each person said they were doing that minute, when one person wrote on another person’s wall if they were both friends, and group activity. Along with this was the “Mini-Feed,” a smaller version detailing happenings with one’s own account that was clearly visible on the user’s profile, right in the center. Within the day, groups (user-created groups of members that anyone can join, in most cases) started popping up in protest. People had a wide range of opinions on the change, from the simple “It’s annoying and unnecessary” to “it makes stalking even easier.” Few people came out in support of the new features, but they were drowned out by the huge protests by opponents of the new features. On the night of September 5th, sensing the upheaval, the site’s main administrator and founder Mark Zuckerberg posted his response. Not deterred, and feeling patronized, the opposition swelled. By midway through Sept. 7th, the group “Students Against Facebook News Feed (Official Petition to Facebook)” had reached almost 750,000 memebers. The group’s founder found himself being interviewed by major media, and the group was talked about everywhere on campus. Ironically, the News Feed only added to its popularity, as every time someone joined, their friends would all see that they had joined and would join the group as well. Very early in the morning on September 8th, Zuckerberg posted another response, this one clearly visible to every as soon as they logged in. It was a partial victory, true, but it left things more or less decided, and most users became happy (although the group still has about 730,000 of those members, and many of us are committed to pushing for the full removal of the news feed (for now, users can simply remove their information from appearing on it). This was a huge day for the power of numbers and the power of the people, and as a socialist I picked right up on it, but I was not the only one - one of the co-administrators of SAFNF(OPTF) posted shortly after the victory that this was indicative of our power. I wholeheartedly agree.

A few days ago (as of this posting), rumors began to circulate that facebook would soon open its doors to anyone who wanted to join by making regional networks available. Facebook at first did not state anything about this on its site, but organically groups protesting it began to appear. The two largest (32,000 members and 24,000 members, many of whom admittedly probably overlap) are starting to gain attention from the media, and Facebook finally posted on its front welcome page a note trying to explain its decision. Their argument is that this won’t change the site much for college users, as colleges will remain independent networks and people from other networks won’t have any access to other users’ profiles not in their own network. This may address the concerns of some, but the main reason most of us still have a problem with it is that they’re killing our website for a profit. There has been the attack from supporters of the change (There are a few of them out there) that we are being elitist, but this is simply not the case. We don’ want to join myspace; that’s why we joined facebook instead. Once they become one and the same, we will have no reason to be on facebook anymore. We’re not trying to keep others out - we’re trying to keep Mark Zuckerberg from destroying the directory that he created in the name of profit. The old joke-slogan from The Simpsons (“Sorry, but there’s profit to be had) seems to apply quite well. I don’t want to reject friend requests from 50 strangers who just want to tell me “ur profile pic is hott.” That’s myspace, not facebook, but if facebook gets the 100 million members that myspace has (facebook currently hovers aruond 9 mil.), that’s what will happen. When they push this change through (Facebook has yet to release an official date for the opening), Myspacebook will be complete. This protest has not reached the size of the previous one, and most of us even within it are pretty sure that we will fail (this is not a cosmetic change, the way the facelift was - it’s about profit), but it’s not over. If, after reading this, you want to help, head here and help us out. Thank you. Questions? E-mail me, and I’ll give you even more annoying backstory.