According to correspondent in San Francisco, today’s full launch of the new-look Facebook has left many of the social networking website’s 100 million users fuming. Facebook rolled out the revamped profile pages in May, which networks are expanded to workplaces as well as colleges and high schools. Chamath Palihapitiya as vice president of marketing was commented that the changes of facebook layouts are motivated by feedback from users as well as a trend toward people flooding the internet with videos, pictures, and music they want to instanly share. The changes make pages livelier and better organised while giving people more control software applications they option to install. But, some people are unhappy or concerned about the recent changes to facebook (cited in The Australian, 2008).
Based on Facebook users experiences, some changes in use and perception of Facebook could affect their audiences perception and attitudes. Attitudes toward the Website is an important measure of Web site effectiveness and perception of interaction with either human-based or computer-based messages is influenced by the speed with which messages can be delivered and the speed with which individuals process messages (Nielsen, 2000). Facebook features changes over time, the following includes a timeline of major Facebook interface changes :
•May 2006 – Networks are expanded to workplaces as well as colleges and high schools.
•September 2006 – News Feed and Mini-Feed are added, aggregating profile changes of friends. New privacy settings are made available.
•May 2007 – Facebook launches their “Applications” platform.
•July 2007 – Facebook removes the profile field that allows users to list their courses.
•March 2008 – New privacy controls are added.
Since facebook features changes overtimes, participation in online communities increases, so does the necessity for flexible privacy mechanisms to protect user data. Many privacy mechanisms of online social communities are purposefully weak to facilitate joining the community and sharing information (Lipford, Besmer & Watson, 2008). As stated by, Gross et al (2005) “the relation between privacy and person’s social network is multi-faceted”. For instance, people want their information about themselves to be known by a small circle of their friends but sometimes people willing to reveal their personal information to anonymous strangers. Therefore, in many cases users are unwilling or unable to put forth the effort to modify and manage their privacy settings to protect their personal information. In fact, it is difficult to control the information in the online world and anything that we share is out of our control.
In my opinion, even though changes have been made by Facebook on the privacy setting for the sake of the users, the users take it lightly that they never bother to fully utilize it. And a sudden change of Facebook layout might affect users, but after they get use to it and understand the improvement of new layout, they will accept it.
Old and New Layout of Facebook
(Source: google images.com)
References:
Correspondents in San Fransisco, September 11, 2008, viewed on 10 November 2009,
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24328928-15318,00.html
Gross,R, Acquisti,A & Heinz III,HJ 2005, ‘Information revelation and privacy social networks’ ,Workshop on privacy in the electronic society, pp.71-80, ACM, New York, viewed 10 November 2009,
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1102214&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=40043593&CFTOKEN=94974016&ret=1#Fulltext
Lampe,C, Ellison, B, N & Steinfield, C, 2008, Changes in Use and Perception of Facebook, viewed 10 November 2009,
https://www.msu.edu/~nellison/LampeEllisonSteinfield2008.pdf
Lipford, H,R, Besmer, A, & Watson, J, 2008, Understanding Privacy Settings in Facebook with an Audience View, viewed 10 November 2009,
https://www.usenix.org/events/upsec08/tech/full_papers/lipford/lipford.pdf
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