In-Your-Face-book

Following Bogdana's description of Facebook as being "a face value book of private lives", I do kind of see that tabloid approach on its users, due to that controversy it generates over apparently innocent settings.

Example: today I noticed this story from one of Sergiu's tweets about how a man chopped up his ex-wife after she changed her relationship status on Facebook from "Married" to "Single". Now there's some self-esteem.

An example of my own (not as harsh though): when I got promoted this year, I thought it would be best to leave the old position listed and just add the new one with the very same company. After adding it, I checked my profile and noticed something like "Mihnea no longer works at McCann Erickson". Good one!

Experiment: my Facebook relationship status is "Single". I have just changed that setting to remove any status. The latest post on my profile is now as follows: "Mihnea is no longer listed as single" - and I have already been asked twice about why I changed it. A far worse alternative is if you feel like keeping your "Married" status off the record - your wife will have a blast. :)

Now, I do know that one of this social network's very first functions was this gossipy relationship status trinket, but let's not overdo it with the remarkably misleading notifications, people!