“Hi! Welcome to the new Facebook.”

Ugh. Again.

When the new Facebook made its debut last month, I had as much interest in learning about new privacy settings as listening to an entire Gilbert Gottfried comedy audiotape.

Yet, with all great and addictive social-networking technology comes great responsibility. Understanding the new Facebook changes is an integral part of the continuing conversation on Internet privacy and social networking. The new, unfiltered News Feed and the introduction of Top Stories may turn some users off of frequenting the site. However, another faction will resound in a swift, apathetic, “eh.”

While some look at the new News Feed feature as potentially encouraging stalking, I would argue that it streamlines the stalking process so stalkers log off of Facebook quicker. Consider this thought for a moment: prior to the update, one would have to tediously trudge, page-by-page, scrolling wall post after wall post in order to learn about the eccentricities of every one of their friends. Now, the News Feed does all this heavy clicking for you. Also, the new Timeline feature will give users the capability to scroll through an unlimited history of their friends’ activity, just in case the News Feed missed something.

In case you have not taken a tour of the well-developed pre-launch page of Timeline, it will boast a header with all personal data such as relationship status, major, university, hometown and job title.

Additionally, all your stories, apps, likes, friends and recent activity will allow users to, as Facebook co-founder and president Mark Zuckerberg said, “share the story of your life on a single page.” This is a step toward minimizing the amount of pages the need to cycle through. Who wouldn’t want to get off Facebook faster?

Nevertheless, it seems like Zuckerberg is moving the company in a direction. What exactly that direction is, users are just going to have to see. Yet with all this “innovation and progress” on the site, how is it benefitting users and do they really care?

When asked if her social networking habits would change because of the additions to the site, junior early childhood education major Rose Zingarelli said, “I’m not going to lie, I creep [just like] everyone else at some point, but all of these changes, like showing everything you are doing, everyone you are talking to, and your exact location of where you were when you made the comment, makes me feel like Facebook is stalking me!”

It is for this reason I concede: Alyssa, you win the Point Counterpoint. After all the research and fact-finding, the new Facebook is just too creepy for me, and I am officially deleting it. Goodbye Facebook. It’s not you, it’s me.