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A Social Networking Reprisal: Anti-Feeds Group and Statistics
Users bite the hand that "feeds," aka Facebook
updated 9/9/06 1:00pm

On September 5, 2006, many college students crawled out of bed to find that their popular social networking site, Facebook had been given a "facelift" by the Facebook Team. This facelift mainly consisted of two new features called "News Feed" and "Mini-Feed." These feeds, similar to RSS news feeds, update the user on every public change to all of his/her friends' profiles. Many loyal Facebook users were disgusted by the changes, comparing the new Facebook to MySpace in terms of its new stalker-esque features. Mark Zuckerberg posted a blog entry in an attempt to calm the frenzy.

In retaliation, a Facebook group was formed to petition the new features, and to let Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook Team know that Facebook users everywhere wanted their former Facebook back (a more formal petition was also formed here). This group was formed at about 8 am PST the same day that the changes were implemented. Before the photo gallery for the group was taken down, people started posting screenshots of the member count as it rose to 20,000, 50,000, and so on. I have used this information in addition to saved pages from my Google Desktop cache to reconstruct a fairly accurate visual representation of the members that joined the group that day.

I would like to thank Peter Denton from Rice University for helping to reformat my Excel sheet, and for getting my x-scale right. I also figured out how Excel represents time values in the process.

Now we're getting fancy. Notice the repeating pattern in the blue line for each day. Also, the (new) pink line shows the derivative of the member total, which means the members who joined per minute. The pink line shows the times that people are most active on Facebook. I got rid of the wall posts line - because seriously, who needs that? (If you still want it, it's in the XLS and CSV files on this page).

I have granted NBC permission to republish my data on Thursday at 4 pm on the air and for their web version of the news story "Facebook CEO: 'We Really Messed This One Up'"(however, notice that they reformatted my graph using the incorrect x-scale). NBC also received a statement from Facebook regarding "new controls" to stop the feeds on Thursday.

If you would like the data for these graphs, you can download it here: (XLS or CSV). Please feel free to modify it and/or republish it as long as you give me credit for the original data. If you republish, I'd love to see it, so send me an e-mail.

WE WON! - Scratch that. Zuckerberg's apologies aside, there are a few things that still need to be fixed. People are now starting to leave the Anti-Feeds group, as seen on the graph. The "change in membership" line is going negative right now, although the trend will push it positive from about 4-10pm today. Don't leave the group! News Feed and Mini-Feed can still publish stories about:

* Things you add to your profile
* Photos you upload or are tagged in
* Notes you write or are tagged in
* Groups you join or create
* Events you create or attend
* Networks you've joined
* Status update

We still don't have full control over the feeds yet, so don't leave the group yet.

If you would like to reach me, feel free to e-mail me at: