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Facebook Launches Facebook People

"Facebook has a lot of communication problems," writes VentureBeat's MG Siegler. Earlier this week, the company was forced to backtrack on a new Terms of Service plan that left users "feeling like they had unwillingly ceded ownership of their data to the site." Despite backtracking quickly, the damage had been done, as nearly 100,000 members signed up for a group protesting the new ToS.

But that's not all: "PR glitches continue to rise," Siegler says, adding that, "the company runs the risk of being viewed as a faceless (ironic, huh?) and untrustworthy entity." Given Facebook's messy media and public relations, it comes as little surprise that the company is extending a new olive branch to users and press people alike in the form of Facebook People, an area of the site that aggregates employees thoughts and opinions in a centralized area.

Facebook People will share their thoughts and opinions on three different categories: "engineering," "platform" and "life," with more on the way, according to Siegler. Clicking on any of these categories sends you to a page full of post titles and brief introductions to the Facebook people on it, complete with profile pictures of the authors. Says Siegler, "I find it pretty refreshing that Facebook is open to highlighting its employees' ideas. That, along with its newly-stated goal to rewrite its terms of service in plain English instead of traditional legalese, could blaze a trail for other massively-used web companies in the future."

Read the whole story at VentureBeat »

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