Mighty Facebook given a poke in the eye

But founder Mark Zuckerberg is facing a major backlash – with scores of online groups threatening to defect to Google Plus or Twitter.

Millions of users worldwide say they are struggling to adapt to the amount of recent changes to the site and are asking the billionaire not to tamper with a phenomenon that has become a part of their everyday lives.

At Facebook’s annual developers conference in San Francisco this week, Mr Zuckerberg introduced the new profile Timeline, saying it would allow people to live even more of their lives online.

He said: “Millions of people curate stories of their lives on Facebook every day and have no way to share them once they fall off your profile page. We have been working on Timeline all year. It’s the story of your life and a completely new way to express yourself.

“It has three pieces – all your stories, your apps and a new way to express who you are.”

Facebook has also started introducing changes such as its new ticker feed which, like Twitter, allows people to see everything their friends are doing online in real time.

But the changes have not proved popular. One Facebook group, named We Hate the New Facebook So Stop Changing It, has two million members worldwide.

Founder Nick Wagner said: “It‘s not because we don’t want change, it’s because the change is bad and it’s changed too often for us to get used to it.”

Thousands of Facebook users are now warning Mr Zuckerberg they will move to Twitter or Google Plus unless the site is changed back to the way it was.

Craig McGill of Glasgow-based social media marketing company Contently Managed said: “They are trying to make it more human, but from what people are saying so far it doesn’t seem to have gone down too well.

“I think because this is such a big change you will see a lot of people moaning about it, but I don’t think it is likely to put many people off.

“People think Facebook has stayed the same, but there have been an incredible amount of changes to it since it started.”

Grant Whiteside, technical director of the Ambergreen online marketing agency in Edinburgh, said one of the main reasons Facebook was introducing changes was to try to find more effective ways of advertising to its users.

Facebook this week announced new partnerships with online services such as Spotify and Deezer, which will make it easier for friends to recommend and share music. The new aggregated pages will help Facebook gather huge amounts of information about its users, but will still not give the site the advantage that Google has of knowing precisely what its users are searching for online.

Mr Whiteside said: “I think at the end of the day we are still going to use Google for information and retail, and Facebook for finding out what your friends are doing.

“I think Facebook still has a long way to go.”