Facebook’s recently tested ‘feature’ that displays old status updates from you and your friends in the right hand sidebar has caused quite a stir amongst Facebook users, Social Media professionals and privacy advocates.
Called Memorable Status Updates at the time of posting, this feature has also been called Previous Status Updates and Memorable Stories, although one upset Facebook user has dubbed the updates “Memorable dirty laundry from the past”; an apt quote that highlights part of the problem.
Out of Date, Out of Mind
[pullright]Out of date information is the cryptonite of the power of social media.[/pullright]The biggest complaint from most users is that some old status updates may be insensitive. Imagine a 2 year old post appearing to you or your friends about the death of a loved one, getting fired, or a declaration of love for your now-estranged husband. Ouch.
However, even if the statuses shown are inane, objectively there is a far bigger problem with these old updates, namely that they are just that: old. Out of date information is the cryptonite of the power of social media. On a site where people are obsessed by posting and reading what is happening NOW, a status update from 2 years ago is irrelevant and pointless.
As one person commented to the story on Allfacebook: ”Has anyone seen one that is really memorable?”
Deleted Content
On a more worrying note, some users have said that even deleted status updates have been appearing as “Memorable Stories”, which obviously brings up some stinging privacy issues.
Facebook has responded to these allegations by saying that it is a “glitch” or “bug” and they are looking into it.
What’s the Point?
Regardless of what the average disgruntled user may think, Facebook developers don’t simply try out new ideas for no reason. There are many motivations for adding features, including improved user interface, better account management, enhanced overall experience and optimization of ROI for business users.
[pullleft]…if a community driven site isn’t providing features that are enjoyed by the community, what’s the point?[/pullleft]So I have to wonder, when the whole point of Facebook was to provide people with current, up to date information about their friends, why have they introduced this archive-based feature?
Has their success gone to their heads? Do they see themselves as the chronicler of our generation? That may well be the case, but there are plenty of archival options for preserving Facebook updates for future generations. Not to mention the fact that if users are curious about someone’s past, they merely have to search through their updates.
More likely, is that this is just another feature that Facebook have shifted to the right hand side bar in order to try and balance content and advertising in that area of the site. More people looking at the sidebar would mean more people noticing the ads, which in turn should mean better revenue for Facebook.
The feature, which Facebook says is only being tested to a limited number of users, is still undergoing changes, and continues to disappear and reappear from view. I hope that before a decision is made about it’s future that they will at least glance at the pages full of feedback.
After all, if a community driven site isn’t providing features that are enjoyed by the community, what’s the point?
[alert_blue]More information:
Join the Facebook Group “FB, Lose “Memorable Status Updates” – or Give us Control”[/alert_blue]
Thank you for covering this! You “get” it! Great article, you covered the main gripes.
> Regardless of what the average disgruntled user may think,
> Facebook developers don’t simply try out new ideas for no reason.
Actually, they do. The entire codebase is open to every developer to make any changes they wish, and these changes can roll out into production without authorization.
Further, they have regular “hack-a-thons”, where developers are encouraged to make changes to other parts of Facebook where they don’t usually work. They experiment with new or fun ideas, and if it seems good enough, then these changes sometimes get pushed out into the production site.
It’s kind of the wild west of development. And it results in junk like the “feature” talked about here.
Wow! Thanks for that Matt. While that attitude seems fun for a test environment, seems a bit irresponsible and unprofessional on a live site.