When was the last time you checked in on an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend on Facebook? You know, just to see if their life is worse than yours (and if it isn’t, cursed under your breath)? Or if not an ex-partner, then an ex-colleague, a potential date or someone similar? Chances are it wasn;t all that long ago and you have felt fine doing so because they’ll never know.
Well, all that might well be about to change. Facebook, as you have no doubt heard, has rolled out an update to Groups that basically allows owners of Group pages to see who has looked at what content in the Group. It’s a no doubt handy addition, allowing admins to manage their Groups more effectively. They know who has seen the content and who hasn’t and can act accordingly. Lovely.
Rumour has it, though, that Facebook is considering rolling the update out site-wide. That will mean that your finger-print free snooping on your exes Facebook profiles will no longer be fingerprint-free. They’ll know exactly who has been looking at their page and when they see your name in amongst their nearest and dearest what do you think they’ll think? Exactly, you don’t want to know.
Online snooping is about to take a massive drop should Facebook go ahead with this move. It’s going to hurt a lot of people too, not least the rejected, scorned and discarded who were holding on to that last tenuous thread of a relationship long since dead. That could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your point of view.
I tend to think this might be a bad move for Facebook to make. It could well lead to a drop not only in snooping but in interaction, time online and all sorts of other metrics Facebook relies on to keep its shareholders (partially) happy. I’m sure they’re mulling it over, but in the end I really don;t think they’ll make that data – which they have had from the start I imagine – public. The backlash won’t be worth it. No roll-out of yet another look this, it could be suicide by the social networking giant.
So don’t worry losers, piners and rejects – you’re probably ok for a while yet.
Thank you for reading Your Stalking Days Are Over. Nearly. Maybe., originally published on TechDrink. Ben Greenwood is the founder and editor of TechDrink. You can follow him on Twitter and Google+. You can also follow TechDrink on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.