A Whole New Facebook

A Whole New Facebook
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In mid-September Mark Zuckerberg, founder and creator of our generation's latest obsession, unveiled a new plan in which Facebook was supposed to come even further in the 21st century; new group features would be added, a timeline to show how everyone's life evolved since the caveman days and a mini news feed that is equal to the irritating one on CNN. The newsfeed, which basically does nothing, and group profiles, which are slowly driving this brunette as well as many others out of their minds.

What was wrong with the old Facebook? When it was just a few settings, nothing big, nothing complicated, when it was fun to just bounce around around and learn what was going on in our friends' lives, posting and commenting on each others pictures, it was a fun way to explore new and old friends' lives and the idea of getting to join a favorite celebrity and actually having access to them was awesome.

Through the old Facebook, I got to meet my heroes. I had a one-on-one conversation with Barbara Taylor Bradford about writing, ask fashion questions to Diane Von Furstenberg and learn about activism with Marlo Thomas, and got to also support my favorite charities including the Joyful Heart Foundation. It was so much fun and I learned so much about different people and cultures.

I also became heavily involved with a group of wonderful whacky people who from each part of the world brought something new to the table. I learned about life in England, trends in Scotland and theater in Germany. One of the benefits of being on the social network was learning new and interesting things about each person, how a single mom in North Carolina raises her son or how a single girl from Canada navigates the fashion world.... I learned about a whole new side of people that never could have happened without the social network.

But now I worry that I'll lose that with all the new Facebook changes. So far I've lost many friends, my group and many threats of spam and I don't understand what was the purpose of the "facelift." I get we need to become more interactive but at what cost?

Because my group went crazy over the past few days, I decided to see if I wasn't the only person who was having problems and it turns out no one is happy at all, everyone is having problems locating their friends' pictures, having their comments put out there for for the world to see, posts disappearing, all sorts of problems and they are all screaming for attention but nothing seems to be happening. There is also a fear that the new Facebook will be a magnet for future spyware and viruses.

I think if they don't fix the problems that people are having now, a lot of people, myself included, will be jumping ship to Twitter and or even go back to MySpace, which I'm sure everyone remembers the problems we had there, constantly being hacked and spammed plus the fact we had to make sure nothing expired on the page and the setup... Facebook was supposed to be less of a hassle and the signup has even gotten more complicated before; in order to sign up, you had to be in college but now it's anyone and the fact that a password can be hacked just as easily is even more frightening because with a simple hacked password, now it takes minutes for a person to gather information on another person

Another factor is that this allows more cyberbullying to take place, that people can become even more vulnerable and be attacked which as we all know has become an epidemic especially among teens

My point is that this new Facebook facelift is going to be the antithesis of what Zuckerberg has envisioned. It will only bring more frustration and more aggravating especially for the older generation, who have never be involved in the social networking part of life and have tried to join in, are suddenly becoming excluded because they can't keep up with the updates. I think if the changes were slowly being introduced that would be fine but to have them all thrown at us at once is too much too soon.

Tell me, what do you think of the new Facebook? Do you like it or Do you wish they would keep it the way it was?

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