2.7 Million Protest The 'New' Facebook

More Intrusive Advertising Alienates Users

This weekend 2.7 million people will be boycotting Facebook.

When Facebook first broke onto the scene, everybody was still using Livejournal or Myspace, but only because you needed a profile to stalk other people's profiles properly.At first Facebook was only available at certain universities, and for the most part, you could only view the profiles of people from your own school.

What seemed like a limitation, however, became the perfect tool for allowing personal information to be shared. It made contact more simple. It wasn't just a website, it was a tool, and it made my social interactions in college less awkward than they needed to be. Everything from running a club to throwing a party could be done in one place.

But this social Garden of Eden couldn't last for long. Like all great places on the Internet, Facebook gained popularity and opened up to the global network. Cliques of schoolmates expanded to include jerks in high school, a manager and co-worker or an estranged and awkward ex-girlfriend.

As everyone and their mother's best friend's son who you used to play with on occasion as a kid joined Facebook, the need to advertise seemed justifiable. That much web traffic was costly. It was a small price to pay for such a unique social tool.

A small advertisement, tailored to your interests, was barely asking much, and we nodded our heads and said, "OK, Mark Zuckerburg. We'll give you a little bit of money because you're doing a good job. I'm efficiently stalking everybody I ever knew around the clock, and that's one addictive drug." Like all drug dealers, Mark Zuckerburg was just starting us out on the gateway stuff; he knows you're a social junkie and the Internet smack he's peddling now comes at a heftier price.

We've all seen free service turn into an ad-sponsored service; when a site becomes popular, it needs money to run itself and so something always has to give. In most cases, the price you pay is reasonable. Myspace is an advertisement disguised as a website on the homepage, but at least you can deck out your profile and always keep a playlist of your favorite music. Livejournal offers a reasonable paid account plan to have more accessibility. If not, a free account will do just fine for most people.

The price Facebook has has asked for is unacceptable- not the two advertisements, nor the unflattering long spam bar on the side (the kind of thing that Facebook was always supposed to be above.) For the New Facebook we've had to sacrifice accessibility and fun so that someone else can make money. As the New Facebook (and it's always called "New Facebook" like "New Coke") rolled out, the outcry was bigger than ever.

Several Facebook groups popped up asking one million people to stand against the changes done to Facebook. Many stood together not only met this goal, but beat it; the biggest now holds 2.7 million people. If 2.7 million people all packed up, moved to another site and then invited all of their friends, there could be quite the mass exodus from Facebook. They'll even use Facebook to tell their friends where they're going.

But as the weeks since the initial forced change occurred, the fighters march on, weary and angry. Weary because Mark Zuckerburg has refused to hear them out. Angry because they have legitimate gripes with the new website and he's refused to say anything except "deal with it."

He's not stepped down from his throne of money to work with the people who got him there, to fix the website that they just want to use properly once more. The man behind the curtain has been revealed. He's a greedy Harvard drop-out who got the idea to bamboozle an entire generation of fellow college students into paying off his student loans, with a couple extra billion to spare.

Not only that, he's got Bill Gates whispering in his ear, and so it's no surprise the New Facebook's application menu sits right above your Windows start button and is essentially the same thing. I can see Mr. Zuckerburg for what he really is; a computer twerp who ripped off Myspace, fixed its problems, and repackaged it.

And it's going to be sad when it eventually crumbles under its own weight, especially to do so at record speed. People left Myspace mostly because of spam and intrusive ads, and it looks like Facebook is about to go that route. It may be even worse because Facebook sacrifices the fun and accessibility it once touted in order to make room for more advertisements.

Facebook went from being neat to sterile; from being well-maintained to neutered altogether. The wall/news feed combo is an attempt to make the site more like Twitter or other feed sites. Except the execution is sloppy, and they make sure that the advertisements are the most important story. You might not find out that your friend recently updated her profile, but you'll be sure to see that advertisement for Careerbuilder.com with your friend's picture next to it, as if he gives it his personal thumbs up.

The more he ignores people's complaints, the more he's making them branch out to new networks, giving other dropout punks the idea to take Facebook, fix the problems and repackage it.If he doesn't, then the already disillusioned masses are going take root in someone else's info farm. It's only a matter of time.