Tony Brown, DST Correspondent

What many described as the largest student protest since the ‘60s resulted last week in a victory for the users of Facebook who had protested a new feature on the student social networking site. A News Feed service on the site that posts updates of social events within one’s network of friends quickly came under fire after its debut on Tuesday morning. The News Feed acts as an RSS of gossip, highlighting the juicy details of daily life: Bobby added Jill as a friend, Jane and Michael broke up, and Morgan added new photos of herself—complete with time stamp and link to the subject’s page. All of the information provided in the News Feed can be found by browsing each user’s page; the News Feed simply makes the hot details easier to access.

Students called the feature stalkerish and a serious invasion of privacy and began to make noise the best way they know—on Facebook itself. Within hours of the News Feed premiere, several groups of thousands of students had formed in protest of the new feature. Membership in the largest group, Students Against Facebook News Feed, spread like wildfire among angry students and in three days amassed nearly 800,000 members.

Ironically, it was the News Feed itself that enabled many of Facebook’s 8 million-plus student users to sound off on the topic. Displaying each friend’s enrollment in a protest group on a user’s home page was the only advertisement needed to assemble such immense numbers. Within 72 hours, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had offered peace via an open letter apology and new privacy controls: “We really messed this one up… we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them.” For now, all seems to be quiet on the Facebook front and the majority of users seem to have adopted the new privacy policies.

There are lessons to be learned from the Facebook fiasco; we’ve entered a new era of active online organization and initiative. Many users of Facebook have realized the potential of the site to induce widespread change and have turned to issues like net neutrality and world hunger. Still others have organized in petition against stingrays, in light of Steve Irwin’s recent death. While the group is merely casting a humorous light on the recent news, it shows the largest followings are encouraged by media buzz and personal conflict.

And finally, learning to recognize the wants and needs of networking site users. It’s a lesson Facebook executives learned the hard way. “This may sound silly, but I want to thank all of you who have written in and created groups and protested. Even though I wish I hadn’t made so many of you angry, I am glad we got to hear you,” said Zuckerberg in his open letter. “This was a big mistake on our part, and I’m sorry for it… if you have more comments, please send them over.”

Tony Brown is a freshman at the University of Missouri.