Popular social networking site Facebook has undergone some major
renovations, but not all users are pleased with the changes.
CNN.com reports that it has received more than 200 unsolicited
emails from Facebook users, complaining about the new Facebook,
and that several petitions are circulating online, asking
Facebook execs to give its users the option of going back to the
old format. One petition, begun by Scott Sanders, a student at
Austin Peay University in Clarksville, Tennessee, has more than
1.5 million signatures.
The new look was first introduced in July, and users were
initially given the option of switching to the new format or
keeping the old one. This transitional period expired two weeks
ago, when the old version was eliminated.
“It’s tempting to say we should use both designs,
but this isn’t as simple as it sounds,” Facebook
co-founder Mark Zuckerburg on a September 18th blog post on his
site. “Supporting two versions is a huge amount of work
four our small team and it would mean that we would have to
build everything twice.
In 2006, Facebook was the target of protests when it introduced
a tool called “news feeds” which automatically
broadcasts users’ personal details.
Facebook founders are hoping that this current protest will
eventually subside as users become more familiar with the new
format.
Mobile social networking services sites, services on the rise.
Its official: social networking sites aren’t just for computers anymore. Many major companies have made announcements in the past week that they are now or will soon be offering mobile social networking services.
One such company, Visto, unveiled a new service called Visto Mobile 6 which allows you to constantly check popular social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, and others from your mobile phone to find out if any of your social networking friends have updated or changed their pages.
AT&T and Verizon have also announced new services. AT&T’s My Communites is a $2.99 per month service and Verizon’s SocialLife for $1.49 are both based on the Intercasting Corp Anthem social networking platform. Yahoo has also developed a version of its oneConnect service that will allow people to monitor social networks using their Iphone or regular mobile phone.
So what’s next for social networking? If these new apps and services become as popular as most people predict they will, social networking may become the most valuable technology-based business communication method since email. If so, look for every CEO of every major corporation to have a MySpace in the very near future.
