Why it doesn’t matter that Facebook changed your email address

It’s not Facebook that’s broken, it’s my ipod screen 😦

Facebook’s probably doing you a favour.

Some newspapers and bloggers are getting excited over the recent change to the way email is handled on Facebook.  Another example of Facebook trampling over your rights, they suggest.

Here’s my take: It doesn’t matter. Not even a little.

First: you shouldn’t even be showing your email address on your facebook profile. This is an open invitation for spam, for privacy reasons it shouldn’t be there either. If you had set your email address to private then you won’t notice this change and don’t need to notice it.

Secondly: we’re talking about email people! The communication medium of the 1990s! Since when did people go to facebook to find your contact details to email you? Never.

If someone’s on Facebook and wanting to get your attention they will either:

a) write on your wall (‘wall you’, as the kids say) or

b) they’ll send you a facebook message ( ‘inbox you’, again, those kids).

By making your default email a generic @facebook.com address, Mark Zuckerberg is probably doing you a favour. Emails from people you don’t know, get sent to the black hole that is your ‘other’ message box and you won’t see them.

</panic over>

So Twitter is down …

No tweets for you right now

This doesn’t happen very often

I went to check with one of the crowdsourcing sites I’ve been to before to cross check.

http://www.downrightnow.com is where people alert that a site might be having trouble.  The more alerts the site gets, the more likely a site is down.

Except Down Right Now is, err, down right now. Probably from all the people trying to report that twitter is down right now.

Luckily there’s always Down for everyone or just me?

When twitter comes back, follow me.  www.twitter.com/robf

*UPDATE 1804 BST*

mobile.twitter.com is working.