Why Faceberg has its pitchforks out

In Faceberg, the people are up in arms over the new, improved Newsfeed, which seems to choose for us what we see about our friends. The goal is to help filter the "social utility," and the New York Times writes a jaw-stroking think piece about how it represents an important new direction online. Hmmmmm...

That hasn't stopped 700,000 people from joining groups -- in just the past three days -- protesting the change. The biggest affront? Facebook only allows the 250 friends it deems most important to you (algarythmically, of course) to be listed in the feed. After that, the filtering philosophy says, you don't really care. (NYT glosses over this point.) Here's a link explaining how to remedy this.

Do people care in Charlotte? Uh, yeah. I posted two items about the changes on my wall and received more than 40 responses in two days. (And remember, only 250 of my closest friends could see this, at least when clicked on the new, default Newsfeed.)

Over on Twitter, everyone's favorite annoying little bird has been crowing about its new searchability, thanks to Bing, the greatest search engine no one uses. (And, apparently by design, a very economical porn search engine.) Google is huffing and puffing its way up behind the Bing deal, and all this was announced at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, where there was so much tweeting about tweeting that 50 tweets simply announced Twitter CEO Evan Williams was taking the stage.

Here's just a really radical idea: Why don't you guys stop twisting the dials long enough to make a little money? I agree with the NYT that filtering is the next big thing in cyber-communications. But Facebook friends lists, the simple way to filter that most users won't take the time to set up, does this pretty well.

Over here in the cobwebbed corner of what my friend Andria Krewson calls "legacy media," we do something pretty well: Hit people's seasonal needs. Halloween is Saturday. Facebook is the biggest photo-sharing system in the world. How'sabout a cheap way to share via family, age groups around the country, topics of costumes, with a paying prize for best costumes? Thanksgiving will be big-time photo sharing on Thanksgiving. What about a nonprofit tie, or a way to support the troops? Christmas might have a few Facebook and Twitter holiday e-card possibilities. Hello?

Twitter is already searchable. Sure, incorporating tweets into search engines is intriguing for all its possibilities. But let's work on some standardized hashtags first. And I want to get updates on my NCAA bracket this year, telling me exactly where I stand after each game. I want Election Night tweets that aren't all over the map.

Instead of giving us "the next big thing" every few months, why don't you guys just give us better platforms for our real lives? In other words, we're your customers. Act like companies, not messengers of the gods. Follow our needs, and stop leading us into "the future."