Users of Facebook feel differently.

Social networks like Facebook and myspace allow their users to hangout online and share photos, music and musings with groups of “friends.” Apparently the folks at Facebook thought that if some sharing was good then a lot of sharing would even be better. 

On Monday, Facebook launched “News Feeds” for every user. “News Feeds” would automatically send an update to everyone in a user's circle of friends on a user’s latest Facebook activities and changes a user might make to their Web profile. For hundreds of thousands of users, that was “too much information.”

Facebook’s 9 million members are primarily high school and college students and has been a huge success online for this valuable demographic. According to Tech Crunch, 85% of students at colleges and universities that are supported by Facebook have a Facebook profile. The backlash from users was substantial.  Several Facebookers also joined user groups such as "News Feed—You Suck" and "Facebook needs to chill the f**k out.” From Wired,

“Angry users blasted the features in forums and public blogs as "creepy" and "too stalker-esque" -- even though all of the information displayed in the News Feeds is available elsewhere and no private information is being shared. An online petition protesting the changes already has over 55,000 signatures.”

Satire was not lost on the issue, Let Them Eat Cake wrote, “It streamlines the stalking process. Two hours worth of stalking can now be done in less than five minutes. That's progress, baby.”  And there was a funny feature in MSNBC Newsweek, “In Defense of Facebook.”

The debate over privacy in the social networking sphere is taking place on relatively new ground. When it comes to sharing personal data, how much is too much? After all, people participate in social networking communities because they want to share personal information about their lives with their friends.

Bloggers publishing personal stories with RSS feeds, Flickr users posting public photos and Facebook users filling out a profile have all consciously chosen a certain level of transparency. Online communities encourage open sharing, so, even though privacy controls are in place for most of these tools, many users publish publicly anyway.

In response to users outrage, Facebook has added new privacy settings that will allow its members to determine how much of their information will be delivered to their Facebook friends through the “New Feeds.” Members may now designate which kinds of information they would like to be displayed on their friends' pages or can also opt out of sharing “News Feeds” information altogether.

According to the Washington Post, Facebook's chairman and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said,

"We want people to know we messed up"

Kudos to Facebook for the quick response to its user’s negative feedback.

After all, who knew that someone that joined a community to share information would be so upset about sharing information?