Afternoon, everyone and thanks for stopping by. The morning totally got away from me, and I feared that we would have nothing to talk about. Luckily for me, Facebook has unleashed a torrent of horrid on their site, and it looks like everyone is riled.  What think you of the new design? Love? Hate? Noticed?  I'm also curious to know if anyone can remember a time when a beloved site made changes *that you actually liked.* I have a pet theory that we hate all changes, always, and it takes us awhile to get used to them. Please prove me wrong.  Also, I had a semi-esoteric article earlier this week on journalists using social networking sites as bogus covers for old stories. Love to hear your thoughts on this -- do you think stories about social media are over- or under-played?  I didn't think they could do it. But hard work pays off again. Facebook has now replaced Google on top of my "Most Evil Software Companies" rankings. Current order - 1. Facebook - My life is not yours to sell. 2. Google - Retruning the best (paid) searches for over 5 years! 3. Apple - We're cool. We know we're cool. And you need to pay us if you want to hang with us. 4. Microsoft - How's that monoploy working now?  If we can fill this list out to the Top 10 by the end of the chat, I will be a happy camper.  There must be consensus, though. This is an organized, civilized chat.  – 九月 21, 2011 1:59 下午  I am one of FB's biggest fans; I've enjoyed it for several years now, and have easily rolled with the changes in the past. But today they've gone too far: This new news feed is horrendous. I actually scrolled around a bit, felt irritated and frustrated, and logged off, and for the first time thought to myself: "Ugh. Not going back in there." WHY did they DO THIS? I know it's free and so, you know, you get what you pay for, but I'll be so sad to have FB leave my life -- it was so fun up until now. (I do have an actual life; I'll probably survive this entire thing. Just very disappointing.)  What did you dislike about it? Please describe, in great detail, precisely the things that made you roll your eyes, then sigh, then willfully turn stony and cold.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:02 下午  ...is like complaining about taxes. Everyone hates them and whines about them but ends up just accepting them because there's nothing we can do about it. Amirite? Can we stop?  Well. We could all stop using Facebook. It is not yet a requirement in American society.  As opposed to taxes, where the only solution is to, like, move to Sweden. And pay even more taxes.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:03 下午  Hi, thanks for taking my question. I've always wanted to know and haven't been able to get an answer as of yet....is there anyway people can tell when you've checked out their Facebook page??  There is not! You may feel free to stalk away, with impunity.  Though who knows. Maybe this will be another change rolled out in the future. The evil future.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:04 下午  Look what I got as a response: Gary Mastersposted toPetition Facebook: Stop Making Changes Without A Social Vote You want to be the boss? OK. Just start your own site. OK? Like Â· Â· 3 hours ago Â· Privacy: Shane Kanode I don't want to be the boss, I want all of US to be the boss, like American, Vote to decide, this is no longer a "site" it is a Public. It has 750 Million users using it, yet they still treat it like a site. It is a Social Networking Community. And I do have my own site you old "behind the times" geezer. 3 hours ago Â· Like What do you make of this?  This is either a tremendous beat poem, or a sign of complete and utter insanity.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:05 下午  – 九月 21, 2011 2:06 下午  for facebook to have a function where you can hide the countless posts b***ing about the changes to facebook. Throw in one that can block the posts about the outrage that is Netflix trying to run a profitable company too, while you're at it.  Thank you for reminding us that we can also grouse about Netflix in this chat, too. Would anyone like to start?  – 九月 21, 2011 2:06 下午  The Facebook change is very frustrating, any idea why Facebook did this without testing to see if it'd annoy people? Is it better for business/advertisers or something? Are they bored? Scared of Google+?  This is an interesting question. I'm sure that there was testing. What I'm not sure is how accurate that testing would be. Because I'm guessing that everyone would say, "I hate it, don't do it." But that wouldn't necessarily mean it was bad. It might be good. Like brussel sprouts.  So it seems that in a test like that, what you would need to do is figure out a way to see if the complaining was different than the behavior -- like, maybe people say the changes are horrible, but then actually spend more time on the site than they used to.  Do we have any market research types here? Can we get some? Paging Don Draper.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:09 下午  Facebook changes are pretty horrible. I dont get it - and I was in the beginning of the facebook charge (started in 2004 - when you actually had to have a college email) and havent been bothered by any of the others. Does this mean I am getting too old for facebook? However, Pandora's new look - love it. Finally! Almost makes up for facebooks weirdness.  Pandora! Yay! A site redesign someone likes!  – 九月 21, 2011 2:10 下午  I don't mind the change to the feed. I mind that I don't even have the option of seeing things truly chronologically. They're all lumped into weird categories like "recent history" and "before that." I like to have the option of seeing EVERYTHING that I missed, as I missed it. Also, the feed on the right side gets filled up with crap I don't really need. Who cares if Bob Smith wrote on Jane Doe's wall? If I'm not friends with Jane, it shouldn't be on that feed... Also, can someone clarify: with the new lists feature, to people get notified if I put them into a list? Why?  I think there -is- a "see everything" option. But I haven't figured it out yet. Nor have I had enough controlled substances to give me the patience to do so yet.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:12 下午  I do not like the ticker in the right hand corner and seeing everyone's activity in such detail. I do not care what my friend wrote on the wall of someone I don't know, and I'm sure my friends feel the same about me. The "top stories" feature is weird--how are they choosing them? It's not of the people I interact with the most. It's frustrating, and I went to the privacy settings today to see how I could make it so things I do are not showing up in the ticker box, and couldn't figure it out. (Someone did say that if you change your language from English-US to English-UK it reverts back to old facebook, but I tried it and it didn't work for me).  Maybe if you tried changing the language to Czech? Korean? Urdu?  "Top stories" appear to be a mixture of both the people that you check in on the most often, and the stories that have received the most comments.  What I find sad about this, from a sociological perspective, is that the randomness about Facebook's curation used to be what made it great -- the fact that you would accidentally stumble upon someone you hadn't had contact with in years, and wouldn't have thought to look up. I call it "The Alexis Phenomenon," after someone I went to high school with. We hadn't spoken in years, but I always love reading her Facebook updates, when they come up.  When the site focuses on the people you are closest to, it more closely mirrors real life, but it takes away some of the whimsy and surprise.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:17 下午  5 Stages of Facebook Irony 1. Deny - any interest in Facebook 2. Anger - Being left out of all the conversations 3. Bargaining - Join Facebook (doing it mostly wrong), just to stay in touch 4. Acceptance - Use Facebook for everything, 18 hours a day 5. Depression - b!tch about any new Facebook alteration  I notice that "Acceptance" does not appear on this list.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:18 下午  Sorry. I was answering Shane who wanted us to have democracy in Facebook and He told me I was old and out of date. And I wondered where the manners went. But I do see the poetry aspect. Just not my poetry style. I tend to the Tolkien style if any at all but admire ee cummings.  Thank you. I did wonder who this Shane person was. But the wondering made it more wonderful.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:18 下午  Netflix, before it bifurcated, had gotten better with moving movies around your queue.  Moving movies around in your queue? On it's own, based on what you would like? Did it do this?  I dropped my Netflix subscription a few months ago. Someone must tell me about this.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:19 下午  I'm back ... You asked why I felt this way: Well, when I saw the redesign it became clear (although I already knew it anyway) that I'm missing many, many people. I'm not able to control what I see. They're spoon-feeding me status updates and "stories," etc, that they decide ... And yeah, I know they did this already but now it feels much more obvious. I also hate the WP's new site. Hate. Not user friendly. (Is it done in Methode????)  The last sentence of this post is an inside joke that almost no one reading this chat will understand. However, if you work in my building, it is the funniest joke you will read all day.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:21 下午  and the DOJ is defending a consultant from Sarah Palin's alaska as being the only one knowledgeable of Native American issue? Are they serious? More indication that Holder is as ineffectual as professor oblahblah. I knew Hillary should have been the nominee dagnabbit!  Person, I have no idea how you wandered onto this chat, but I am glad that you have introduced $16 muffins into the conversation, and I welcome any new discussions of overpriced pastries.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:23 下午  One thing I've never been able to figure out is how FB selects something as "top news." I always just switched to "most recent." And now they've gone and told me which posts they deem to be important to me? Maybe okay if I still had the option of switching to most recent, but even then it's rather presumptive.  It's also such a self-fulfilling prophecy, no? They put the top news at the top so more people click on it, which means that it stays the top. I would like someone to feature "Bottom news that no one is paying attention to." You know, the three-legged dog version of news.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:26 下午  In fairness, if you work in conferences, you know how insanely priced EVERYTHING is at a hotel/convention center. That sounds pretty typical.  It is as if every conference was being held at overcharged wedding prices.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:27 下午  I notice that "Acceptance" does appear on the list, but I was too huffy to notice it.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:28 下午  Hey! Brussels sprouts are awesome! Try them roasted and sprinkled with a bit of parm.  No no. Try them sauted with mushrooms in olive oil with sea salt.  Brussel sprouts are clearly the tastiest food that people think is gross. It was just shorthand, you know?  – 九月 21, 2011 2:29 下午  That would be from this story:  Oh, I know about the story. Are you kidding? Any time something happens in the dessert world, I KNOW ABOUT IT.  I was just noting that we usually don't talk politics on this chat. But we can!  – 九月 21, 2011 2:31 下午  I for one welcome our new muffin overlords.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:32 下午  I was going to just eat the price hike until the Quickster spin off. They ruined a perfectly great thing. I LOVED being able to search for a movie (on my TV interface) and then either stream it or save it to my DVD queue. Now they want me to log in to a PC (and a separate account) to ask for a DVD? Too much work to maintain two separate queues and accounts. Gonna give the DVD the old heave-ho and go to Red Box.  The two accounts is killer. I want one account. One-count. One account to rule them all. I want to pay PEPCO and then stream a movie.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:33 下午  Eh, I don't really see what people are complaining about. I kinda like that I can now tell FB that I don't like reading my friend's frequent posts about how much she loves her boyfriend. People seem to be having the same reaction as when the Facebook feed first came out.  I wonder if they could set it up so that your friend was made aware of this.  "Lori. We have learned that no one likes hearing about your boyfriend. Stopit."  – 九月 21, 2011 2:34 下午  Oooh - i already like them sauteed in olive oil. I will try it with the shrooms!  Add a drop or two of truffle oil, if you had it. The Vegan Black Metal Chef cooked them for me this way, and I almost decided to never come home from Orlando again.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:36 下午  I'm less interested in the politics and more interested in the catering company used. Who makes these muffins that are so delicious that they are worth $16? Or the cookies that were nearly $10 apiece? I must know.  This is what I want to know. I would buy a $10 cookie, one time, just to see if the experience really was nirvana.  But then, of course, you would have a problem. After a $10 cookie, could you really go back to a $.50 cookie?  – 九月 21, 2011 2:38 下午  Keep using Google and you'll be there soon enough.  I know. And by then, Google will have my first-born, and one of my kidneys, and all of my $16 muffins, and then where will I be?  – 九月 21, 2011 2:39 下午  Perhaps the muffins were getting an inferiority complex, due to the cupcake's rapid rise to fame. And decided to up the ante.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:41 下午  Suddenly all of your make-out posts have gotten a lot more interesting.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:41 下午  They have it backwards. I like seeing posts from people I rarely hear from, as I know that I'll always eventually see the more frequent posters, even if I have to play a little catch up. Now it seems those whose posts you rarely see, you'll never see!  Yep -- this is what I was trying to say earlier, but maybe badly.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:42 下午  The vendor/company that runs the WashPo chats MUST be on that list.  Just so long as the chat hosts themselves are not on your list...  – 九月 21, 2011 2:42 下午  I had no problem with the price changes to Netflix - well, I hate paying more, but it made sense that they would eventually begin to charge for streaming. I have serious beef though with QKwikckqster and all of the related changes in queue management.  Have you seen the guy who currently owns the Qwikster account?  – 九月 21, 2011 2:44 下午  I have never used Netflix, but I was supremely amused by the fact that they failed to see whether the "Qwickster" (sp?) handle had already been taken on Twitter. As I understand it, you can't sell a Twitter handle, but the dude who has the name deserves to profit from Netflix's stupidity.  Oh, his account is one I would follow far more readily than any official one put out by Netflix.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:45 下午  I always learned that the rarity of an item can be an important factor in its value; so does this mean that if I rarley post on Facebook, the value of my posts, which substantively have the same value as any other poster on Facebook, will be deemed to be more valuable and therefore rise to the level of "top news" just because an actual post by me is as rare as a unicorn sighting? If so, will this start a new race in which Facebook posters strive to be the most rare poster in order to rise to the level of top news, ineveitably slowing postings on Facebook to a trickle? This might be a good thing, after all....  See, this is what I'm saying. I am far more interested in an elusive unicorn post than I am in the people who post all the time.  Also, Unicorn Post should clearly be the official name for a person who is on facebook but very rarely makes an appearance.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:47 下午  So, when you hover in that feed on the top right and it says someone commented on so and so's status, you get the status and all of the comments. Do these people have the "friends of friends" can see your status privacy settings, or can anyone see your status if one of their friends comments on it?  I think that anyone can see your status, if one of their friends comments on it. But I actually think it's been this way for awhile. It's possible that you just didn't notice it before because of the format.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:48 下午  I'm no longer certain that chat hosts are even real people. For all I know I'm sitting here conversing with a drone. I feel like I'm becoming part of the Borg, I really do.  What would it take, right now, to prove I was human? Is there a Voight-Kampff test handy?  – 九月 21, 2011 2:49 下午  Couldn't they come up with a better name? Or by now have all the good ones been taken?  Good question. I want a name that at least vaguely reminds me of movies. Whereas Qwikster just reminds me of chocolate milk.  Good broader question, too. Sooner or later, all of the good Web site names will be used up.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:52 下午  I have no idea what I clicked, but I got rid of Top News and now everything is as it happens. But I couldn't duplicate that if I tried. In other things I cannot duplicate news, I cannot find where I can go through my whole friends list and decide who to "subscribe" to and what parts of them I want to see. I'm tired of being told that someone commented on someone else's post that they were too stupid to keep private. Or, I assume they weren't private. Can strangers/exboyfriends/frienemies see stuff our mutal friends do now?  You have ridded yourself of the dread Top News. Back away from the computer. Do not touch anything else.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:53 下午  Take a photo of yourself holding a newspaper with today's date. See, newspapers do still have a good use.  But then what will I do when I'm kidnapped?  – 九月 21, 2011 2:54 下午  To me it sounds like a place I'd go for some fast photo copies.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:55 下午  IF you have your security settings locked down, to Friends Only, people you don't know won't see your status even if mutual friends comment on it. HOWEVER, for some reason this security measure is not working now. I cannot change FoF back to Friends Only no matter how many times I try.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:55 下午  Has anyone else gotten completely sucked in to pinterest. It is almost hypnotizing sorting through so many images.  Perhaps we should all use it as an antidote to Facebook?  And yes, I think there are several Pinterest fans here, including someone mentioned a few weeks ago that the whole Pinterest staff is male. Which I love. Young male grannies.  – 九月 21, 2011 2:56 下午  At work I'm part of a national team that works together remotely. I'm in grad school and taking all my courses online and communicate via discussion bulletin boards and e-mail. I'm in touch with friends and family via Facebook. For fun I get on these chats. I do all my banking and shopping over the Internet. When do I interact with real live humans? It seems to be less and less.  Who would have guessed that "The Net" would be the most prescient movie of the 1990s?  – 九月 21, 2011 2:58 下午  Do you know how hard it is to come up with a good name for your business now? It used to be you just had to make sure it wasn't already trademarked. Now you have to make sure no one has the Facebook page, Twitter account or URL. Pretty soon all new business will just be named with random combinations of letters and numbers! Oooh, I wonder if $16muffin has been taken...  – 九月 21, 2011 2:59 下午  "Mr. Kidnapper. I understand what you are saying about the whole bound and gagged thing, but if you could just loosen my fingers."  – 九月 21, 2011 2:59 下午  Monica - I have a similar quandry. I am on Match.com, and just received this message: "A buddy of mine was looking over my shoulder and claimed that â without a doubt â your profile looked to have been written by a guy. I came to your defense, of course, but now weâve got a $20 bet. Am I about to lose $20? -R" How do I convince him I am, in fact, a girl? Or do I not waste my (metaphorical) breath?  I think that this guy is trying to ask you out, no? The whole buddy thing is a ruse. It sounds to me like he's saying, "I guess the only way to win this bet -- wink wink -- is to meet in person for drinks."  – 九月 21, 2011 3:01 下午  (That, or he's saying "Send me some naked pictures of yourself holding today's newspaper." But I don't think you should do that.)  My problem with Twitter as a news feed isn't that it's too self-absorbed, it's that it's inefficient for that purpose. Case in point: the woman who tweeted the runway evacuation at Dulles last week. While it was nice that it was a timely notification of events in real time, this is how it played out: Tweet #1; plane stopped on tarmac, waiting for announcement; Tweet #2 something smells, flight attendants announce pilot looking into problem; Tweet #3; been ordered to evacuate; Tweet #4; getting out of my seat, some pushing, but relatively orderly; Tweet #5: about to jump on slide; Tweet #6: successfully slid down shoot, waiting on bus to take us back to terminal, etc. etc. etc. Overall, it took 18 tweets (including 3 pictures) to convey 1, maybe 2 paragraphs of information. That can't be efficient.  – 九月 21, 2011 3:03 下午  To change the status updates you see from your friends ("Most" vs. "All"), go to YOUR profile, click "subscriptions" on the left, and then click on "friends subscriptions." It will bring up your whole friend list and you hover over the "subscribe" button to change them back to "All." If I want to see that my friend ran out of toilet paper, that's MY decision, NOT FBs!  Thank you. We should probably sign off now so that we may all go do this immediately.  – 九月 21, 2011 3:03 下午  Thanks for stopping by, everyone. I hope that you are lightened by this mass cathartic experience we have just had together. Next week we'll be back to non-Facebook matters.
A weekly chat about online culture.This week,  Web Hostess Monica Hesse takes your questions about Facebook changes, your favorite new sites and more.