If you live under a rock or don’t follow tech news, you probably haven’t heard about the recent changes going on at Facebook.com, a popular social networking website.

Many have labeled the changes at Facebook.com a violation of privacy; well, guess what the old Facebook was? A violation of privacy. The real issue at stake with the controversial Facebook updates are not the new features themselves; rather they are the transition from one unwritten social dynamic to another.

Let me explain; with the old Facebook, you could add new friends, write on your friends’ walls, and do almost anything without it being announced to the world. With the new Facebook, all of a users activities are shown in one convenient news feed. If I add a friend, it is announced to the world. If I write a happy birthday message to my ex-girlfriend, the entire world, including my girlfriend, will see this. If I get drunk at a frat party where I pass out and some guys draw obscene pictures of phallic symbols all over my face with a Sharpie marker, post it online, and “tags” it with my name, again, the world can see all of this. By now you probably get the point, no matter what you do on Facebook, the entire world can see what you are doing, not just a few people.

This changes the entire social dynamic of Facebook.com. Now before a user adds a friend, or joins the “Loveless Panda Haters” group, you’ll have to ask yourself the question, “how will the world perceive me if I do this action?”. Suddenly you’ll find yourself being much more careful about what you do on Facebook. You are much more accountable, which raises several interesting social implications that Facebook may or may not want.

It seems that right now most students are pissed that Facebook decided to change these unwritten social behaviors, norms, and assumptions, and expose all of these activities that have always been going on anyway. With time, the entire social dynamic at Facebook will change; students will become much more accountable and cautious about what they write, which will probably lead to a decline of drunken debauchery stories and pictures.

From my experience recruiting college students, this will help almost all of you later on in your college career when you’re on the recruiting circuit interviewing for a job. Odds are the company you talk to or the place doing a background check on you will check your Facebook profile and see all of your drunken pictures and stupid messages that you wrote to your friends during your freshman years. These new Facebook changes will make you think twice before you join the “I hate large multinationals” group if you have a dream of getting that job at Proctor & Gamble.

On a positive note, you can actually use these technologies to your favor! Imagine building up a “clean” Facebook profile that shows some of the volunteer groups you belong to with pictures posted of that time when you decided to fly to Ecuador for spring break to help build housing for the poor; this speaks volumes about an individual and would be a very favorable reflection of personal character. Sure, we all somehow end up with drunken pictures of us acting stupid at a party; that’s called being normal folks, and it is generally not frowned upon; however, I have seen some Facebook pictures that are borderline porn… this is not what people look for when they are recruiting students!

My next feature request for Facebook? Put some RSS behind these feeds, I want the supposed “invasion of privacy” delivered to my news aggregator!

Stay tuned because I plan on writing a post about how to spin your online presence in a positive way to help rather than hurt you!