Facebook Status Messages To Become Publicly Searchable | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Status Messages To Become Publicly Searchable

nytimes.com

12 pointszackattack10 comments

"In time, though, people may very well decide they are comfortable with their social networking being public by default. That will be a different world, and today will have been one of the most important days in that new world's unfolding."

Isn't that world here already through myspace and xyz social networks? FB's value proposition was that it was a safe place to keep in touch with people in your life. Now it's changing its entire strategy and value proposition because Twitter took one feature and implemented it really well. Is the whole data and search business model that much lucrative to risk the trust and stickiness of its userbase?

In my opinion, I think facebook should improve on its strategy for encouraging real online identities. they already started this with fb connect. I believe there's value in knowing who people really are on the web.

Fb == extension of real life on web. Only makes sense for them to improve that identity platform.

I agree with you. Perhaps Facebook does too - we never know. Facebook's decided over the years that it ought to try out a new feature first, get feedback later.

I think this move is a big mistake on their part, but I also think Facebook will revert to their old idea the minute users get pissy. I almost don't mind, since it's fun seeing them mess with things and because they never make it impossible to avoid their changes.

For an article syndicated from a blog, wouldn't it make more sense to use the link from the original article? For one, the domain will show up properly, and for two, you can't comment on the New York Times syndicated version. Last, I didn't notice until looking at the readwriteweb.com site--there was a significant update to the original post that includes a direct response from Facebook:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_day_facebook_change...

But in the update they also describe problems with the setting; it doesn't update properly when the user changes it. Eventually FB will get this ironed out. But where is the QA on this effort?

I had a friend offering a blowjob to the person that could help her with her term paper. I can see this coming back to haunt her in a few years.

Title is a bit misleading -- I think an edited original, "Facebook Status Messages to Become Public by Default," is more appropriate.

Each day that goes by my Facebook account dies a little bit and I tweet a bit more.

You're one of a few hundred thousand people who think that in the midst of a sea of a hundred million who are just getting used to Facebook.

Luckily, the Internet is free so everybody can use whatever they please. You can even Tweet your Facebook status messages if you don't want to disappoint anybody.

Although Twitter is minuscule compared to Facebook, because it's always been public by default, its influence may be greater in some ways than Facebook. That's the whole point underlying this article: clearly Facebook has been having some Twitter envy for awhile, and they've decided that if they can't join them, they'll try and beat them.

I get that argument a lot here, and I've written lengthy counterarguments before, but that's not at all the case. Look at the features that Facebook introduced to the Internet. They introduced the public feed in the first place, they introduced status updates, peopletagging, granular privacy settings, friend metadata, a whole slew of features I'm certain I missed or am hesitant to credit Facebook. Without Facebook, you don't have Flickr's photo privacy, you don't have FriendFeed, you don't even have Twitter.

The idea that Facebook thinks it has to "beat" Twitter is ludicrous.

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