Users Throw Book at Facebook

TUESDAY, FACEBOOK.COM UNVEILED WHAT COMPANY executives must have considered a convenient new feature: an RSS news feed that alerts members' friends to changes in each other's profiles. By Wednesday, the company was facing one of the largest viral backlashes in recent Web history.

The protesters complain that the RSS feed publicizes potentially embarrassing developments including romantic breakups, friendships going sour, professional setbacks, and the like. Even though this information was available before, Facebook's active spreading of it via RSS feeds offended hundreds of thousands of the site's users.

As of Wednesday night, more than 290,000 of the site's 9 million members had joined a group called "Students Against Facebook Newsfeed," and their dissent has begun cascading from Facebook to other online forums.