Forgive me for not reading this open letter from Mark Zuckerberg until late Friday. I don't login to Facebook as often as I used to, but more on that later. His letter on the further changes to Networks was written Tuesday, so I am sure this is old news to some. I assume Mashable has covered this by now (they have, but they glossed over the negative by-product of the long-overdue privacy changes Zuck announced).
In March 2008 I emailed Facebook to create a Network for BG News, this was done after I got the now-public BG Views Network infrastructure completed, including a unified mail server for all current and past BG News and BGSU Student Publications alumni. With a single email address, a Network is possible in Facebook, so if you look at my Facebook, you see I am part of the BG News Network, among others.
Setting the Network up was done quite quickly, I was pleasantly surprised. About 10 days and everything was set. I just needed more than seven people in the Network for Facebook to generate a proper Network page. Once that happened, having a dozen or so Newsers join the network, Facebook announced drastic changes to Networks.
After all the work I had done to get a Network setup for BG News, Facebook decided to take "Networks" out of the top navigation. And they would soon close down all the Network pages. I got to check it out once or twice before they switched the Network page to a custom search page for people in that network.
This was done because as Facebook put it, "Networks" were not seeing as much traffic as the other top navigation links, such as Home, Profile, and Friends. Really? I can't imagine why.
Beyond my own bias about the issue and our new BG News Network, I think the elimination of Networks for the top navigation was a big mistake. I visited the Network pages, such as the Toledo, OH one, and especially the Bowling Green State University one. But as of mid-2008, those were gone from Facebook.
One less reason for me to visit Facebook.
Fast forward to this week's news about Networks. Now, 350 million is a nice headline grabber, and it is wonderful to watch Facebook grow from the exclusive educational-only network into what it is today (yes, I was in fact going to college before Facebook was born. I am that old), but having more than 350 million users means they all use Facebook in many different ways.
The 2008 changes to Networks paved the way to these next changes, regional networks are going away. Since they already killed the very useful Toledo OH Network page over a year ago, I guess this news alone is not such a big deal to me. However this brings up two points - in bullet form:
I am glad that Facebook will be rolling out major changes to privacy control. Granted, I am a cynical SOB that thinks online privacy is an oxymoron, but that is besides the point. The outlined privacy changes sound good, so bravo to Zuckerberg and his team. Just don't feed me a line of garbage about the casualties of Facebook growing pains.
People use Facebook to identify with others (see Bullet Point 1 above) and taking some of that away is one more way of making Facebook more like LinkedIn or MySpace or ABC Widgets Social Network. I thought the idea was to build Facebook to be a social media tool used to share with people, and something that is not a retread of another site was probably at the top of the list, too.
There are many things that are hinged on the regional networks - automatically filtering news items, for example - and deleting them does not simplify privacy controls, it makes less work for Facebook to do. Getting rid of regional networks is the Easy Button for corralling privacy controls. It does not make it easier for the end user, it gives them less options. It does make it easier for the web monkey behind the curtain.
I miss the Network pages, both regional, educational, and business, and I am going to miss the regional network and the grouping structure it held. These were qualities I liked and used on Facebook, but these types of changes directly effect my time on Facebook these days.
Let's face it, any part of 350 million is a lot, and deleting Network pages and regional networks doesn't make sense when they (used to) offer unique value. Simplification requires more than a hatchet, it requires better organization.
Setting the Network up was done quite quickly, I was pleasantly surprised. About 10 days and everything was set. I just needed more than seven people in the Network for Facebook to generate a proper Network page. Once that happened, having a dozen or so Newsers join the network, Facebook announced drastic changes to Networks.
After all the work I had done to get a Network setup for BG News, Facebook decided to take "Networks" out of the top navigation. And they would soon close down all the Network pages. I got to check it out once or twice before they switched the Network page to a custom search page for people in that network.
This was done because as Facebook put it, "Networks" were not seeing as much traffic as the other top navigation links, such as Home, Profile, and Friends. Really? I can't imagine why.
Beyond my own bias about the issue and our new BG News Network, I think the elimination of Networks for the top navigation was a big mistake. I visited the Network pages, such as the Toledo, OH one, and especially the Bowling Green State University one. But as of mid-2008, those were gone from Facebook.
One less reason for me to visit Facebook.
Fast forward to this week's news about Networks. Now, 350 million is a nice headline grabber, and it is wonderful to watch Facebook grow from the exclusive educational-only network into what it is today (yes, I was in fact going to college before Facebook was born. I am that old), but having more than 350 million users means they all use Facebook in many different ways.
The 2008 changes to Networks paved the way to these next changes, regional networks are going away. Since they already killed the very useful Toledo OH Network page over a year ago, I guess this news alone is not such a big deal to me. However this brings up two points - in bullet form:
- People relate (on a social-economic level) to other people in similar groups, creating relationships, forging bonds, all that crap. Let's just call "groups" in this case "Networks" for Facebook's sake. It is basically the same thing, at least for this argument. Facebook is now taking that away.
- Telling me that regional networks are going away in able to provide a "simpler model for privacy control" is just outright horse shit. Especially when you outline plans to allow granular privacy control of each individual piece of content. The problem I have is the Open Letter makes it look like the only way Facebook can add advanced privacy is to remove networks; these things are unrelated.
I am glad that Facebook will be rolling out major changes to privacy control. Granted, I am a cynical SOB that thinks online privacy is an oxymoron, but that is besides the point. The outlined privacy changes sound good, so bravo to Zuckerberg and his team. Just don't feed me a line of garbage about the casualties of Facebook growing pains.
People use Facebook to identify with others (see Bullet Point 1 above) and taking some of that away is one more way of making Facebook more like LinkedIn or MySpace or ABC Widgets Social Network. I thought the idea was to build Facebook to be a social media tool used to share with people, and something that is not a retread of another site was probably at the top of the list, too.
There are many things that are hinged on the regional networks - automatically filtering news items, for example - and deleting them does not simplify privacy controls, it makes less work for Facebook to do. Getting rid of regional networks is the Easy Button for corralling privacy controls. It does not make it easier for the end user, it gives them less options. It does make it easier for the web monkey behind the curtain.
I miss the Network pages, both regional, educational, and business, and I am going to miss the regional network and the grouping structure it held. These were qualities I liked and used on Facebook, but these types of changes directly effect my time on Facebook these days.
Let's face it, any part of 350 million is a lot, and deleting Network pages and regional networks doesn't make sense when they (used to) offer unique value. Simplification requires more than a hatchet, it requires better organization.
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