Over the last five years facebook has become a very broad church and has widened it's user base far beyond the original remit of Harvard students. According to their own statistics, facebook claims to have over 350 million active users. If facebook were a country, it would be the third most populous country in the world. Given that huge membership, maybe it is understandable that there will always be dissenting voices. I'm not a facebook apologist, they have taken many wrong steps in recent years but most of these wrong steps involve issues of privacy and communication. Long term facebook users might remember the whole controversy over the Beacon technology and in more recent times there was the (justifiable) uproar over the changes to their Terms of Service. The list of valid complaints and criticisms against facebook is indeed a long one. However, starting a facebook group to Petition for face book to stop changing its layout [sic] seems a little pedantic. Should the original users of what was originally known as 'thefacebook' have complained about all of the very first changes that were made to that site? If so, maybe we would still be using a site that looked like this. Of course, if the first site was never allowed to change, then we probably wouldn't be using the site at all as it would have never become popular.

In my mind it's important that we don't lose sight of the fact that we don't pay to use facebook, and so in many ways facebook owes us nothing at all. Let us not forget that facebook does make a profit, and more impressive than their $550 million of revenue last year is the fact that the company has been valued at up to $14 billion. Clearly, facebook is doing ok. In light of this I find it unlikely that facebook will start charging people for use. However, you can find several groups on facebook that are protesting about this. One group claims that from July 2010, facebook will charge $14.99 a month. Of course facebook has denied this, what more could they do? But this won't stop the rumours. People are very angry about changes that may never happen. In the worst-case scenario I could see facebook asking for payment to access certain 'pro' features (whatever they might be), but I am fairly confident that 99% of what most users do will always remain free. 

I find these complaints about possible layout/interface charges and complaints about possibly charging for use complete non-issues. Other non-issues that receive occasional criticism are those situations where facebook goes awol. What amazes me is the perception that many people seem to believe that facebook owes them something. Millions of people spend a lot of time on facebook, but nobody spends anything to use it. I find it hard to complain about a site which gives me something in return for nothing. In contrast, I pay $99 each year to use Apple's Mobile Me service. As a paying customer I feel I have more right to be aggrieved when things don't work. But in both situations, I have a choice. I can walk away from facebook and log out never to return. If I so desired, I could even commit facebook suicide. Nobody is making me use facebook, and nobody is making you use it either.

You should rightly complain, or at least be wary, when facebook does things such as allowing groups to deny the holocaust or when they change your privacy settings without making it absolutely clear what's being changed. But please don't complain because facebook wants to change how it looks, and if such changes disagree with you so much that it makes you angry, then hey, you can leave facebook and maybe that might be the most effective message that you can make.