When Facebook Changed Our Lives - A Rant

When I woke up Tuesday morning, I had no clue that life as I knew it would change. I'm a simple guy, wake up, watch some ESPN, check my email, read some news, and check my Facebook! Good old trusty Facebook. A way to connect with my old classmates at UIUC and my new friends here at UIS! I can get Wall Posts - basically a post all my friends can see when they look at my site, private messages, like Emails, and the occasional poke!

Then... everything changed.

While it's true that we live in a society dependent on information, and while we occasionally troll facebook to see if that girl we crushed on is single yet, we didn't expect that Facebook would do all that work for us!

Is it a case of "Big Brother?" Or is it a new Innovation?

Facebook completely overhauled it's front page, greeting its logged in users with the goings on of their friends. While it's cool to keep up with what your friends are doing, I usually recommend that you call them to see what's up.


Yesterday, 2 of my friends got into relationships, 1 broke up, and tons joined a new Facebook Group saying "I'm Scared of the New Facebook!" Yes, it appears that "Big Brother" is after us, but is it really that bad?

What the new Facebook looks like

"Yes! Facebook has now added another way for people to stalk us!" - H.G.

"No! People are already posting their likes/interests and whatnot on the site, Facebook just found a way to have a competitive advantage over "MySpace!" - K.W.

"It really invades my privacy" J.J.

"What if I don't want people to find out that I added "Juggling" as one of my favorite activities" R.B.

Wait, Juggling? Really?

I'll stop there, but as you can see, it really is a concern among most students! But is Facebook really infringing on our privacy? Facebook does allow privacy settings to allow people what others can see or not see. In a way, what I'm saying is, that while change is good, informing students about a new change in the software might have been better for facebook without all the backlash of just updating without informing.

My 2 Cents
Like I said earlier, I really don't want to find out whether Susie and Jimmy have decided to end a relationship! I honestly think while it's information overload, that people are eventually going to come around to the new look of Facebook. Either that, or Facebook is going to have to succumb to the backlash. I'm still undecided, but I definitely understand when people say that their privacy is being invaded. However, it all has to do with privacy settings. In the long run, I really think that what Facebook has done here will become the norm.

I really want to hear what you have to say about all of this

Because I love you all, here's a David Hasselhoff's music video, Jump In My Car