Return of the Newsfeed

11/12/07

A few weeks ago, on a Facebook profile not so far away....


By now many of you are aware of the problems I have had with my Facebook newsfeed. For those of you who don't, my newsfeed stopped giving me updates about 2 weeks ago. The only items I would see on my newsfeed were wall posts on only my wall and these advertisements about what the most popular books (Harry Potter) and movies (Anchorman) were in my networks.

But Adam- Its just your stupid Facebook newsfeed- who gives a shit?

Well, this guy does.

I remember when Facebook introduced the newsfeed. And I also remember how quickly I was invited to join the groups people created wanting to destroy it. But not me. I saw the newsfeed as a while new frontier facebook was allowing us to conquer.

When Facebook (or The Facebook for anybody who still refers to it as so) was started, the whole networking idea was pretty cool, but its no secret that Facebook really serves us one main purpose:

Stalking.

And being able to stalk our friends and keep ourselves involved in their lives without ever having to actually talk to them was fantastic. Even better was being able to check out people of the opposite sex without having to possess the courage to ever actually talk to them (not that I would know....)

That was of course before the privacy settings went all hardcore.

Advantage- Facebook.

But the newsfeed really took the essence of stalking to an entirely new level. Way back when before the newsfeed era began, stalking meant having to think about the people you wanted to know about. The newsfeed has made that a thing of the past. Now we are able to get updates of up to 40 people we want, while at the same choosing 40 people we couldn't care less about.

Advantage- Adam

Now I know there are probably more important things going on in your lives so that should any of your newsfeeds gone down, you would have been able to deal. Well thats why you're all better people than I am. Not only did I freak out about having to go out of my way to who friended who and who changed their facebook picture for the third time in a week, but I did something I ordinarily would never do.

I took some initiative! I contacted facebook and let them know what the problems was. I got emails back explaining that I was not the only person experiencing the problem (although probably the only person who gave enough of a shit to say something about it) and with in 2 days my newsfeed returned.

Only to stop updating two days later.

Advantage- Facebook

So being the proactive person I am when it comes to things that are of absolutely no importance whatsoever, I sent facebook another message, and heard back from them again. This time, my personalized email was from Theodore from the Facebook team, telling me this time that not only were they still trying to correct the problem, but also inviting me to fill them in on any other problems I was having with facebook.

And then last night, while I was hopelessly staring at an impotent newsfeed, I logged off facebook and logged back on minutes later and magically...maybe through divine intervention...I was able to see that 34 of my friend had changed their profile pictures. And 24 hours later I can happily report my newsfeed is still updating normally.

So a special thanks to Theodore and the Facebook team for coming to my rescue in a dire time of need. No longer do I have to stalk like its 2005. New groups, wallposts, pictures and relationships, all on my homepage once again.

Advantage- Adam

And all was right in the world again.

For now anyway.