It seems like whenever a change comes along to some established technology, there are two predominant reactions that you hear almost immediately. Fans of the technology start screaming, “Ooh, Bright Shiny” as they explore the wonderful new features, while detractors start grumbling about someone moving their cheese. Usually, both camps have something valid to say, but then a new group comes along and complains about the people oohing or grumbling. Lost in all of this are underlying, and perhaps more important issues to be explored.

The latest changes to Facebook seem to fit nicely into this. Some people like the new newsfeed and timeline. Others are grumbling. Now that I’ve played with both the new newsfeed and the new timeline, let me share a few thoughts about the underlying issues what I think are two important underlying issues, engagement and privacy.

In social media marketing, engagement one of those rarely quantified goals that many people chase and few define. I won’t join with the ranks of those who denigrate engagement because of a lack of clear definitions or metrics. Perhaps engagement is like quality, beauty or other ideas that are important and hard to measure, or to borrow an old quote, like pornography; we can’t define it, but we know it when we see it.

Just because we can’t define it, or have a clear quantification, we can compare things relatively. Does the changes in Facebook make more engaging or less engaging? Do the changes make it easier or harder for people using Facebook to engage with their friends and followers?

To the extent that the changes are bright and shiny, that is likely to improve engagement. To the extent that they are moving cheese, they are likely to decrease engagement. That is, of course, until the new changes lose their shine and everyone gets used to the new location of the cheese. Then, we can look at the real impact.

In terms of the newsfeed, I don’t really see it as a big change. It continues to reflect Facebook’s attempt to find what you’re interested in. For people with wide ranging and varied interests, this is likely to be a bad thing. I don’t believe Facebook is going to help these people, and more likely will disappoint them. To borrow from Eli Pariser, Facebook is introducing a new and enhanced Filter Bubble. (See his TED Talk which touches on this.) For others, if it may build engagement, but it may mean that people trying to reach them will end up preaching to the choir.

The timeline is a bit different. Facebook has done a few things right here. They’ve opened it up to developers, and just as the Internet makes it possible for just about anyone to set up a blog and claim they’re a journalist, it also makes it easier for people to claim to be developers and get free previews. I actually set up a developer account a long time to explore linking Facebook and Drupal, so it was very easy for me to start using the new timeline. To the extent that this encourages others to dabble a little more with online development, this is a good thing.

The timeline is a considerable improvement over the old profile pages. As such, it is likely to improve engagement in many ways. Yet others have commented, and I concur, that it looks a bit more like MySpace now, which is noteworthy in a few ways. From a futurist viewpoint, should we be asking if Facebook is the new MySpace? MySpace was flying high once, but not anymore. Will Facebook meet a similar fate?

More importantly, when people think about stalking online, they very often think about MySpace. Now I believe that a lot of the fears about cyberstalking have been overblown, or perhaps more significantly, misdirected. It isn’t the unknown pedophile that is the biggest threat, it is our frenemies, and I suspect that Timeline will encourage inappropriate frenemy behavior.

It may be that Facebook will make it easier to filter out inaccurate information, or other information that you want filtered out. It already has that ability, and is asking me to confirm places where I have not worked, have not gone to college and who are not in fact relatives of mine.

Yet there is other information that it is putting up that I wish that it wouldn’t and I can’t find a nice way to prevent, such as detailed information about distant relatives, and details about various work experiences that are not appropriate. Facebook need to clean this up.

More importantly, there are concerns about other aspects of privacy raised by Dave Winer and others.

Bright Shiny? Moved Cheese? Enhanced Filter Bubble? Privacy Threat? All of this, and more probably applies to Facebook’s latest changes and more. It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out. What’s your take?