Facebook just stole one of Myspace’s worst features
Facebook may have just taken a page out of MySpace's playbook: It's now testing a creepy feature that broadcasts your friends online activity status right on their profile page.
Mashable Business reporter Kerry Flynn first noticed the feature and snapped a few shots of the activity status for us. The feature popped up even when she checked out her own profile.
As you'll notice in the screenshot, the feature shows that friends are either "Active" in bright green letters or gives an estimate of how long it has been since they've been on Facebook in grey.
If a friend hasn't been on Facebook for more than a few minutes, the activity monitor will show exactly how long it's been. So, in theory, if this is eventually rolled out to everyone, your friends would know that you've seen a notification and decided not to respond to it.
This is obviously super creepy.
Sure, Facebook Messenger already gives you immediate updates about your friends' Facebook usage — but the activity status there is at least for a purpose, so that you know whether they might be ready to receive a direct message. Putting the activity front and center on a Facebook profile feels more intrusive, allowing users to track exactly what their friends are doing across the network.
Thankfully, the feature only extends to friends' profiles, so you can't stalk strangers. We've only seen a few iOS users with the new feature, so far, and it doesn't appear to be rolling out for desktops.
We reached out to Facebook for more information about this specific feature test, and we'll update as soon as we hear back.
Topics Facebook Social Media
Brett Williams is a Tech Reporter at Mashable. He writes about tech news, trends and other tangentially related topics with a particular interest in wearables and exercise tech. Prior to Mashable, he wrote for Inked Magazine and Thrillist. Brett's work has also appeared on Fusion and AskMen, to name a few. You can follow Brett on Twitter @bdwilliams910.
