Bob Stepno's Other Journalism Weblog

Thursday, September 7, 2006

News About News at Facebook

(Sept. 10-12 updates added)

All of the stories below are talking about the controversy over a "News" model at Facebook, the collegiate social networking site that turns up right after "word processing" when I ask students what they do with their computers...

With an intro "online journalism" class looking for project topics, one of them could be a group search for local angles or untold stories of life in the Volunteer zone of Facebook...

(The links below have been sorted into roughly chronological order.)

Facebook blog: Ruchi Sanghvi (Sept.5): Facebook gets a facelift

Forbes (Sept.5): Facebook Makeover

(Sept.5) Mark Zuckerberg says "calm down"... (Who's he? "The face behind facebook.")

PaidContent (Sept.6) Some Users Find New Facebook Features "Creepy"

Rex Hammock (Sept.6): A youth protest movement dreamed up by parents?

(Sept.7) A quote from North Dakota that sums up the problem: "I woke up a few days ago to find that, much to my horror, all my recent doings on the Facebook were being looked at by all my friends...."

AP (Sept.7): New Facebook features have members in an uproar

eWeek (Sept.7): Web Social Site Facebook Hit by Privacy Protests

MediaPost OMD (Sept.7): Users throw book at Facebook

Fred Wilson, A VC (Sept.7): Facebook's Feeds

Back to Zuckerberg (Sept.8): "We really messed this one up."

Dave Winer (Sept.8): Okay, Facebook did good. But Facebook also did bad.

BusinessWeek (Sept.8): Facebook learns from its fumble

NYTimes (Sept. 10): When Information Becomes T.M.I.

USA Today (Sept. 11): Facebook will soon be available to everyone

TopTechNews (Sept. 12): Facebook Expands to All Netizens

NYU Washington Square News (Sept.12): Facebook info is public, duh

MIT Tech (Sept.12): Facebook and the Evolution of Stalking @ MIT
... a quote:

"I realize that my class is the last class of undergrads at MIT to have entered college without the Facebook. And maybe I'm old-fashioned, crusty, or both, but it's just a little appalling when freshmen arrive at MIT with over 700 friends..."

More background:
Search The Chronicle of Higher Education (full text via UT library databases).
Search Inside HigherEd (for free)
Search The Daily Beacon... for past articles
Search News.Google.com

Related topic -- Athletes, Facebook and MySpace: Too Personal? (Mike Strange, News Sentinel, and see his blogging editor, Jack McElroy)

2:02:38 PM