First published on TalkingWeb.co.uk

Facebook have unveiled their new “Friendship†pages, or â€œâ€˜creepy’ Couples†pages according to people interviewed by Yahoo! News.

The pages show items that have been added on Facebook – shared posts, photos and events – between you and another person. Whilst the development was apparently mentioned last week, news reports state it wasn’t said it would be inflicted on everyone and people aren’t happy about it.

Now, I know when you run a business you need to think about your customers and what they want. But Facebook is a free service and like all websites, they can add what features they want to. No one cries out when Amazon add a new “ooh you bought this so you might like this†sort of feature – it’s often seen as very clever and cool. I know Facebook are flying closer to the wind because it’s people’s personal information and it’s on display but they only know what you – or your friends – give them.

The idea of Facebook making these new pages did, I agree, sound a bit unnecessary and I could see why people didn’t like the idea of them – maybe you don’t want an easy way for the world to see all the photos of you and someone.

But I went to my own Facebook profile to check it out – and I’m pretty sure you’ll only see these pages for you and your friends.

This wasn’t mentioned in the news report I read, but that report did say that to see the page you “Click the gear menu at the top of a friend’s timeline to see a friendship pageâ€. So I went to my husband’s page and I clicked on the little icon of a cog just under his cover photo and to the right, and clicked on “see friendshipâ€. It then showed me a page of information relating to just him and myself – the logged in viewer.

I tried to see if there was an option to see relationship pages between him and someone else – to check if I was selected as the default because I was the logged in viewer but I could still select other people – and I don’t think I can.

So this outcry is (currently – whilst these pages operate like this) all abit of fuss and nothing from people who don’t know the details, I think. This isn’t new information on Facebook – Facebook have always shown you little things about your friends – “Photos of you and xxx†when you view someone’s photos page for example. So this is just a bit of database work to link that information together on one page at a click of a button.

The report did also mention how the last time Facebook caused outcry like this was when, over the summer, they introduced a feature to tell you when someone has viewed a message you’ve sent them  – I have to agree, that is annoying! You read a message, you can’t be bothered to reply, but the sender knows that!

Facebook will have had their reasons though – the cycnical reason is that it makes you reply and so keeps you using their messaging system / becoming reliant on their site as a way of communicating with your friends (why can’t people email anymore?!) but the other reason is that with Facebook so prolific on phones, if you’re arranging to meet someone or someone has to tell you they can’t make something, you can see the message and without you having chance to reply the sender can know that you’re aware they’re going to be late or what time to meet etc. This is, of course, suggesting that people do still interact in real life rather than just online now a days…

It’s just the “delivery reports†we used to get on some networks on mobiles. Which as a sender was great – but probably led to a lot of couples-arguments!