Facebook: The Revolution WILL be televised

Many people have already written about the great Facebook rebellion, but if you don’t know, here’s the deal: Facebook introduced some new features yesterday and like every feature before they just dumped it into people’s laps. The difference was WHAT they had put upon the users of this massively popular college social-networking site.

The News Feed feature aggregates every single action made by a user with whom you are friends (everything from leaving a group to changing their favorite book) and notifies you in a list that tracks all friends. Needless to say, most were horrified with the new “stalkerish” aspects of the Web site and protest groups and complaint emails began pouring in. Within roughly 24 hours one of the largest protest groups “Students against Facebook News Feed (Official Petition to Facebook)” had gained roughly 200,000 members.

Someone on the outside might ask: What is everyone so upset about? Most members have made claims about the privacy issues involved, or that there are no ways to remove the feature (although one can tediously remove each News Feed entry one at a time). I see this through the eyes someone who has taken communication theory classes and therefore through the eyes of media theorist Marshall McLuhan. This has become a battle between “hot” and “cool” media interactions.

Previously, Facebook represented a passive media service. Yes, all the same information was already available on the Web site, but it took a lot of work to notice when one of your friends had changed their favorite profile or broken up with a significant other — the user needed to search out such information. Now that information is active: it is pre-packaged and quite literally “broadcast” to everyone regardless of your desire to inform them or their desire to know. Personally, I think this will go down as the “New Coke” of the 21st Century. It also shows the consumer power that Gen Y has come to expect.

Technorati: Technology | College | facebook | Rebellion | Media