In Your Facebook

The New York Times askes: "Is Facebook Growing Up Too Fast?" At more than 200 million members the answer is probably maybe.

When Facebook signed up its 100 millionth member last August, its employees spread out in two parks in Palo Alto, Calif., for a huge barbecue. Sometime this week, this five-year-old start-up, born in a dorm room at Harvard, expects to register its 200 millionth user.

That staggering growth rate — doubling in size in just eight months — suggests Facebook is rapidly becoming the Web’s dominant social ecosystem and an essential personal and business networking tool in much of the wired world.

Yet Facebook executives say they aren’t planning to observe their latest milestone in any significant way. It is, perhaps, a poor time to celebrate. The company that has given users new ways to connect and speak truth to power now often finds itself as the target of that formidable grass-roots firepower — most recently over controversial changes it made to users’ home pages.

As Facebook expands, it’s also struggling to match the momentum of hot new start-ups like Twitter, the micro-blogging service, while managing the expectations of young, tech-savvy early adopters, attracting mainstream moms and dads, and justifying its hype-carbonated valuation.

Maybe this is an obvious question, but if 200 million joined to be part of Facebook, why do the founders feel compelled to change their creation to be more like Twitter? Why can't users have both?

Much of the discontent over changes to Facebook seem to revolve around changing the service to make it more like Twitter. Hey, I have a Twitter account -- who doesn't -- so why can't users like me enjoy what each service has to offer?

Unlike search engines, which ably track prominent Internet presences, Facebook reconnects regular folks with old friends and strengthens their bonds with new pals — even if the glue is nothing more than embarrassing old pictures or memories of their second-grade teacher.

And what's wrong with that? I like being able to reconnect with hometown friends, friends who have moved across the country, and like-minded new friends. I like being able to keep up with what celebrity "friends" are doing, and having them sometimes send messages back to me. And I like that Facebook can help organize people around causes I care about.

As Facebook stampedes along, it still has to get out of its own way to soothe the injured feelings of users like Liz Rabban.

Ms. Rabban, 40, a real estate agent and the mother of two from Livingston, N.J., joined the site in November 2007, quickly amassing 250 friends and spending hours on the site each day.

But these days, she spends less time on the site and posts caustic comments about Facebook’s new design, which turns a majority of every user’s home page into a long “stream” of recent, often trivial, Twitter-like updates from friends.

“The changes just feel very juvenile,” Ms. Rabban says. “It’s just not addressing the needs of my generation and my peers. In my circle, everyone is pretty devastated about it.”

Ms. Rabban is not alone. More than two and a half million dissenters have joined a group on Facebook’s own site called “Millions Against Facebook’s New Layout and Terms of Service.” Others are lambasting the changes in their own status updates, which are now, ironically, distributed much more visibly to all of their Facebook friends.

The changes, Facebook executives say, are intended to make the act of sharing — not just information about themselves but what people are doing now — easier, faster and more urgent. Chris Cox, 26, Facebook’s director of products and a confidant of Mr. Zuckerberg, envisions users announcing where they are going to lunch as they leave their computers so friends can see the updates and join them.

Hey, I can post that I'm heading out to lunch, but my former classmate who now lives a thousand miles away isn't going to be able to join me. And that's okay, because we recently had dinner together -- arranged using Facebook -- while I was on a work-related trip to his hometown!

So hey Facebook ... why not just be good at what you do, instead of trying to be all things to all people? There is room in the world for more than one way to connect.