Facebook pulls 'stalker list' tool after Gawker exposes it

A post on Gawker yielded a moderate wave of panic across the Web when it asserted that by typing the "down" arrow into Facebook's search box, you could see a list of the five people who view your profile the most: Not quite. It was more likely a list of five people whose profiles a user visits frequently, or at least something along those lines. Some users promptly nicknamed it the "stalker list."

Even more curious: Facebook pulled the feature within hours of the Gawker post going up.

"Facebook tries to surface the people we think are most important to users to make it easier and faster for them to navigate the site and find what they are looking for," a statement from Facebook issued on Tuesday read. "The search drop down is not a list of those that have searched for the user. It is also not a list of people whose profile the user has viewed the most or who have viewed the user's profile the most. To avoid any confusion, this will no longer appear."

Whatever the algorithm behind it, the tool was pretty accurate. My "stalker list" consisted of two close friends, two people I'd dated relatively recently, and my younger brother, whose profile I occasionally check up on to make sure he's staying out of trouble--I know, I know, I'm such a good sister.

According to Nick O'Neill at AllFacebook, I was one of the people he "stalked." I'm, uh...flattered?

[cube3]

well maybe WEBLINS will offer a consulting fee after making the same comment about a "interface" feature they have that shows all avatars that visit it seems a profile page. and then links to that user on any page directly back to that the other in a click..

many of these "college" science experiments that are released globally into the the thrilled tech press blog machine are as well thought out as PETS.com but a thousand times more damaging.

web3.0? will we even make it there..;)

lol
c3

[M C]

Now that was confusing.

[cube3]

? posting is really broken....

http://www.news.com/8301-13772_3-9940210-52.html

for reference.... story about a global avatar app....... try it.. then lets chat about cyberstalking and privacy on the web we knew.;)

[fwbroke]

the Russian social net site odnoklassniki.ru does this by default .....

[ricebird02]

well, it didn't make sense for me at all. the fourth and fifth people are profiles, that i rarely, if ever look at....i can easily think of at least 10 other profiles i look at more often. and if it wasn't a stalker list....then why did facebook pull it? Question of the week.

I relate this glitch to the early version of the little mermaid where you can clearly see the priest's erection. some facebook employee's little joke got exposed.

[paulvalach]

Too bad the global "avatar" is EXE based. No Mac version, sorry it s 2.0 /3.0 world where platform should not matter. Companies that don't offer that will wither away. Too bad for them too.. Mac people make the best stalkers...amongst other things.