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Where’s the Facebook backlash?

Last year about this time, hundreds of thousands (maybe millions by the time it was all said and done) of college students protested the addition of the news feed to Facebook.

Since then, there’ve been mere ripples as the site was opened to our parents and bosses. Barely a peep was made as external applications were added forcing us to constantly ignore requests to be bitten by a vampire or take quizzes about our friends. Now we’re asked to declare our top friends and scroll for ages down our BFFs profile because he/she added so many applications that reading their wall (not the super wall or wiki wall or advanced wall) now requires you to hold down the down arrow and wait — for a long time — to eventually reach the bottom where the old-school wall has been relegated.

Now, I’m not saying these additions are horrible. They aren’t. Not all of them at least. Some are fun, some make it more useful. Others are annoying. I guess as long as it doesn’t degenerate into MySpace, I can live with the changes.

One change, however, that caught my eye when I logged in today was this:
facebook profiles going public

Yes my friends, per Facebook, we may soon be Googleable. Where’s the backlash on that from all the privacy-protecting college students who a year ago freaked that their friends would know when they added a new favorite movie?

Clicking on Read more…

Since your search privacy settings are set to “Everyone,” you now have a public search listing. This means that friends who aren’t yet on Facebook will be able to search for you by name from our Welcome page. Public Search Listings may only include names and profile pictures.

In a few weeks, these public search listings can be found by search engines like Google. No privacy rules are changing; anyone who discovers your public search listing must register and log in to contact you via Facebook. Learn More.

OK. Fine. I don’t care that people know I’m on Facebook. I don’t have anything to hide, a few of my editors are even my friends on Facebook. I wouldn’t have my privacy set to being searchable by everyone if I cared. Several old friends have found me through this feature, which is why I leave it on. But I don’t know, I’m somewhat leery about the idea of anything Facebook being searchable through Google, etc. I know, I know. The privacy settings are the same. I can up them at any time, or I could just sign off the site all together. I won’t over this, but I do think that they’re chipping away, bit by bit, at our tolerance. One day I’m going to wake up and this will be the top hit when you search for my name in any search engine.

The public search listing contains less information than someone could find right after signing up anyway, so we’re not exposing any new information, and you have complete control over your public search listing.

Fine. But, I’m still not sure mixing job-hunting and Facebook is a good idea. Check out this release from CareerBuilder.

But, what do I know?

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