Facebook.com users that logged into their accounts Tuesday quickly found out the social networking site went through a major facelift overnight, which upset many Syracuse University students who use the Web site regularly.

Instead of checking for new messages, new The Wall posts or confirming or declining new friend requests, users could see literally all of their friends’ updates — from new relationship statuses to newly created Facebook groups — on their homepages.

Facebook’s newest feature, called News Feed, promises to keep users as connected as possible to their friends’ latest activity.

‘News Feed highlights what’s happening in your social circles on Facebook,’ wrote Ruchi Sanghvi, product manager for News Feed, in Facebook’s official blog. ‘It updates a personalized list of news stories throughout the day, so you’ll know when Mark adds Britney Spears to his Favorites or when your crush is single again. Now, whenever you log in, you’ll get the latest headlines generated by the activity of your friends and social groups.’

Paired with News Feed is Mini-Feed, a more personalized version of News Feed. Instead of updating users about all of their friends’ activity, Mini-Feed centers on a single user and appears in his or her personal profile.

‘These features are not only different from anything we’ve had on Facebook before, but they’re quite unlike anything you can find on the Web,’ Sanghvi wrote. ‘We hope these changes help you stay more up to date on your friends’ lives.’

Although the Facebook team likely created the new features with the best intentions, reactions on the SU campus are anything but positive.

‘I think it’s so creepy and completely unnecessary,’ said Regina Harlig, a senior graphic arts and policy major. ‘It has just gone too far.’

Harlig sighted Facebook’s status feature — which began last summer and allowed users to post their current location —as already ‘kind of getting there.’

‘I’m sure they’re aware that people use (Facebook) to keep tabs on friends or strangers,’ Harlig said. ‘I don’t know if they’re really interested in helping people stalk each other. It will probably be (taken down).’

Danielle Flythe, a senior fashion major, said part of the reason Facebook’s update is such a failure is that about half of the people on her friend list are people she doesn’t even know that well.

‘I don’t care what my random friends from Wisconsin are doing,’ Flythe said. ‘I wish they would take it off.’

Adrienne Ho, a junior fashion major, said she even went as far as to look for the e-mail addresses of the parties responsible for the update so that she should ask what they were thinking.

And negative feedback to the new Facebook extends beyond the SU campus.

A slew of global groups, which allow users to unite under common causes and interests, have already been created to protest Facebook’s redesign.

One group, ‘Students against Facebook News Feed (Official Petition to Facebook)’ already has 83,100 members and counting.

Jennifer Hill, a junior fashion major, calls the new Facebook ‘stalker material’ and said she couldn’t believe her eyes when she logged into her account Tuesday morning.

Hill said the first thing she said that day was, ‘Have you been to the new Facebook?’

According to reactions thus far, Hill could not have been the only shocked one.

Published on February 27, 2007 at 12:00 pm