Facebook's new news feed: Feel the hate
By now, "Naomi," the friendly talking head tasked by her boss to explain "a few updates to make it easier to see more of what you want on Facebook and less of what you don't," may be considering hunkering down in an undisclosed location for a while. Come to mention it, so might the Facebook braintrust, which is now dealing with an extraordinary user backlash to the most recent site revamp.
The gist of the disgruntlement can be summed up as follows: Give Facebook credit for being utterly consistent. Each update they put out hides more of your information from you, while sharing more of it with your friends - and without your permission. All the while, Facebook keeps making the interface harder and harder to navigate. Obviously, not every user feels that way but there are enough of them out there today hollering loudly their dissatisfaction. Will it force Facebook to retreat? If the upset persists, perhaps, but as one tweeter pointed out, we've seen this movie before and the script usually ends up with the same ending: "Give it a month and everyone is going to get used to the #newfacebook. Happens every time."
That's not to say the transition has gone smoothly. In the new version of its news feed, which breaks up top stores and recent posts into separate columns and adds a new ticker-like column with live updates from friends, Facebook has tried to further emulate Twitter's real-time messages and updates.
The changes have drawn a wave of complaints as people took to social networks--including Facebook--to express their annoyance, with many complaining about the clutter and confusion of all the extra feeds. Others were annoyed by the sudden change. The hashtag #NewFacebook is among the top trending topics on Twitter, and the responses have been fairly negative.
Given Facebook's history, the reaction to an update isn't all that unusual. Over the years, some Facebook users would predictably bristle each time the service modified the user interface. But the latest tweak to the service has touched a nerve.
Here's a a sample of some of the reaction out there today:
CNET's Roger Cheng contributed to this report.