Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB): The private and the public collide

Of late, Facebook Inc(NASDAQ:FB) users have revolted against the social networking site by complaining about having their private messages being made public, but the site. Facebook revolutionized social networking over the internet, by attracting a large number of people to it, worldwide.

The new feature, the Timeline is said to be the cause of this purported glitch. Many users have said that they saw their private messages on their timelines, and that these messages could be viewed by other people as well. The Timeline is a new feature on Facebook which categorizes and shows your activities over Facebook, from the time you joined the site. It uses a linear time-based mechanism to show what you’re up to, and what other people are saying to you. The old Wall on Facebook is slowly being replaced.

Will FB Rebound After The Recent Slump? Find Out Here

The issue of the private messages being made public has been denied as being a fault of the social networking site. Facebook has denied having anything to do with this. They have instead suggested that people might have written to others a long time ago, and now, they cannot recall having done so, publicly. They are slightly taken aback at what they had written publicly, and Facebook has become a scapegoat for them. Users are, however, insisting upon the fact that this is indeed an issue with the site, and they have not suffered a lapse of memory, by Facebook is in denial.

What with the privacy settings becoming more and more complicated with the upgrades which Facebook keeps introducing, the source problem may well be the confusion caused by the users not having set certain conversations with a stringent privacy setting. There are various levels of privacy which can be imposed on different aspects of the site. Profile pictures, status updates, conversations and albums can not be viewed by certain people on your friends list, and not by others.

However, for a site which makes money out of convincing people to give out their personal information to the company, if this issue gets out of hand, and people start becoming doubtful of the level of privacy which Facebook entails, the company might soon suffer losses in terms of the withdrawal of investors and advertisers.