The advertising deal between Facebook and MySpace that will allow MSN Adcenter to reach Facebook members is creating a backlash in the social networking scene. Facebook members are rioting over the social networking sites news feed and other related features. A user driven and community created network of college students, Facebook has made strides with its’ MySpace-like community. Facebook’s new homepage features are intended to help users but the changes have upset the community as a whole. There are now several “I want the old Facebook” groups being formed daily with thousands of members.ÂÂ

The new home page of Facebook features updates on every single thing your friends are doing on the Facebook network. Whether they became single recently, signed up for a new class, or ate a corn dog… you’re going to hear about it. One would think users would appreciate the changes in terms of Web 2.0, think again! The new homepage has become a headache to users and peeping toms watching every move you make on the social networking giant. Simply put, users feel betrayed. It appears Facebook is following in Friendster’s foosteps of “who’s viewed my profile” in a midguided effort to out-feature MySpace. Facebook members have taken their disgust a step further by starting a Facebook petition to resist the step forward into Web 2.0. (continue reading below)

Perhaps the majority of these college and high school students do not understand Web 2.0 and its’ usefulness. Then again, if Facebook were to allow users to pick and choose which friends they were to receive news feeds from and what to receive updates on then perhaps Facebook users would welcome the change with open arms. The news feed changes are the most hated new features. Members feel they are being forced to blog, that the new features act like a ’stalker watch’ update service, and that the updates on all their friends little changes become overwhleming and irrelevant. Currently the petition has over 51,962 people protesting the changes. Facebook should make some changes before its too late.

Even more startling, there is a Facebook group called “Students Against Facebook News Feeds” with over 380,000 members and over 5,000 new members being added every 30 minutes.

The real deal is that Facebook administrators must understand that you cannot push features on a community of internet users that do not understand nor need the new features. The news feeds of Facebook were a shock and unwelcome advance. The Facebook administrators should have eased the features in or polled users on what features they would like to see added to the site.