Facebook changes their website so often these days that it feels like you need to retrain yourself on how to use their service almost weekly. One particular feature they like to tweak on a semi regular basis is the news feed. It’s the first thing you see when you go to their website, a long stream of what your friends have done on Facebook, with advertisements showing up all the way on the right hand side, conveniently away from your field of vision. Now what if Facebook started putting those ads in your news feed? You’d freak out, complain about it for a few days, and then shut your mouth and go back to using Facebook as usual like nothing happened. The folks at TechCrunch are saying that Facebook is indeed thinking about rolling out sponsored news feed items, and that they’re going to start with their mobile applications first, eventually bringing the same experience over the to the desktop version of the site.
It’s unclear as to when Facebook will actually do this, or whether they’ll do it at all, but it just highlights how helpless users are to the decisions that come from the top. Similar to how nearly everyone with an ounce of taste thinks that the new official Twitter applications for iOS and Android are so horrifically bad that it’s worth it to purchase a third party client, Facebook can do whatever they want with their service and we just have to take it. There’s always Google+ if you want to use another social networking service … but it’s ridiculously confusing and the only people on it are “social media experts” and bored middle aged men destined to prove to their children once and for all that they’re hip with the internets.
We’ll keep our eyes on this story as it develops.