Facebook is whack

Literally only hours after I last logged in, Facebook has totally done itself in and received a totally unwanted facelift early this morning. There are reports that The Facebook Blog disabled comments after LOTS AND LOTS of people were lashing out at the new facelift and how it displays too much information without the option of voluntarily turning it off completely *.

The new Facebook home page (after you log in) displays a News Feed, a top to bottom list of what every single one of your contacts has been up to.

News Feed highlights what’s happening in your social circles on Facebook. It updates a personalized list of news stories throughout the day, so you’ll know when Mark adds Britney Spears to his Favorites or when your crush is single again. Now, whenever you log in, you’ll get the latest headlines generated by the activity of your friends and social groups.

On your profile page (again, after you log in), there is a new section called Mini-Feed that displays information specific to that particular user — if you’re on your own Facebook page, it’ll display information on you, and if you’re on your friend’s page, it’ll display information only about him/her.

Mini-Feed is similar, except that it centers around one person. Each person’s Mini-Feed shows what has changed recently in their profile and what content (notes, photos, etc.) they’ve added. Check out your own Mini-Feed; if there are any stories you don’t like, you can remove them from your profile.

This facelift is totally dumb in my opinion. It releases too much information while making it way too cumbersome to keep certain information private. Who the heck wants to know when every one of their friends gets a comment, joins a group, or even changes the slightest amount of information in their profile? I think the old “recently updated” lists were better for keeping track of this, but now the homepage itself is a public display of how much time we all have to waste (shoot, I want that information private!).

Seriously though, the facelift may look swell, but the idea behind it is scary and more than just a bit intrusive.

* In order to remove items from being displayed in people’s News Feed, you have to manually remove each item by going to your Mini-Feed and clicking on the “x” next to the item you want removed from public view.