more facebook suckage. users? what?

FACEBOOK WAKE UP.

you are no longer about the end user.
it's becoming more and more evident as you slight your users.
and your users LOVE you. and your users want to HELP you.
but you are making it increasingly difficult.
yet another reason why: opening the gate to the walled garden.*
*i will address this further a little ways down. feel free to scroll to the star.

since yesterday alone, when the threat appeared, 120,974 more people joined the petition against the new facebook layout. and now there are even more groups. i was going to link to all of them, but there are too many. i'm over 20 groups, with thousands of members apiece, and i'm only at page 5 of the group search. my favourites thus far are "i miss the old me" and "i hate the [...] stalker layout."

you are clearly making it easier for advertisers to utilize facebook in the new layout. i also get that you're trying to "grow with your users" as the college age kids enter the job market--and that's cool, sort of. it's sleek, more organized, and trying to be more relevant. no argument there. the redesign was not a bad idea. i just feel like more PR could have been done surrounding users' concerns other than a blog post or two. users are feeling slighted in favour of The Business.

i already briefly talked about why i'm not keen on the redesign, but the other part is something ReadWriteWeb points out: "as Facebook becomes less of a place for them to hang out and more of a tool for networking in the business sense of the word, the cleaner design and additional controls make sense." Facebook isn't about business. it's about fun. did we lose that somewhere between when it started as a college networking site and now when it's trying to become LinkedIn?

because that's what marketers are interested in.
[and sure, that rocks for 'us' professionals, but if you USE Facebook, this is just lame.]

*and now Google is being allowed to search and index parts of Facebook. namely groups, discussions, wall posts, and events--you know, sites of interaction. i'm sure my alma mater will LOVE knowing when the next big kegger is going down--if they hadn't sorted it out by trolling the book already. not to mention if you ever wanted to NOT be a part of that ridiculous group you joined in high school, TOO BAD. you're internet-linked to it for life. CONGRATS!

WHERE ARE MY NEW PRIVACY FEATURES TO MATCH!?
you seem to be selling me a whole lot more than you're helping me. that's dangerous for you.

[sidenote: i already realize Google owns more of my life than anyone else short of the government; that's my choice using blogger, gmail, etc. i may not have a lot to lose through this index, but i'm betting a lot of the kids who use it will in the future unless everyone above shifts prerogatives about what the internet is and means to incoming generations. on principle i am against it.]