Seriously, who let the hyperbole out?
In a classic Wired-Magazine-esque move, the Wall Street Journal opened a story about protests over Facebook’s new friend-tracking feature thusly:
Facebook.com, the popular social-networking Web site for students, is suddenly getting the cold shoulder on campus.
There are plenty of reasons this summary is unfair, and the article deconstructs itself:
- Facebook has over nine million members logging 6 billion page views a month. Under half a million members protesting does not a revolution make.
- Those who do protest, mostly protest by making Facebook groups and chatting on the site. That’s not a cold shoulder, that’s solid traffic.
- For every user that doesn’t like the new feeds, there are ten who love them.
- And that traffic will add up fast.
Oh well, at least some college kids got their names in the Journal and made Mom and Dad proud, so it’s not a total loss.
New Facebook Features Have Members in an Uproar [Wall Street Journal, free]
*Originally published at Valleywag.
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Nick Douglas writes the Silicon Valley gossip rag Valleywag. On the side, he writes Fibonacci poetry and short stories about net-saturated life.
