New features on Facebook – an online community geared toward high school and college students – have stirred up a debate.

The features, known as news feeds or mini-feeds, went into effect last week and allow everyone on a person’s friend list to see all activity performed by that person, ranging from changes in relationship status, political views, personal stories and even comments and messages left on other friends’ pages.

And it has caused a few problems.

“My girlfriend caught me messaging another girl because of the new privacy settings. It’s an invasion of privacy and it really messed things up for me,” said Nick Onorati, a freshman kinesiology major.

The new privacy policy basically allows everyone to see everything, Onorati said.

“I have a little bit of a problem with the new changes,” freshman Katie Rehkugler, a general business major, said. “I am no longer a fan of Facebook because of them.”

While some feel the change is invasive and unnecessary, others couldn’t care less.

“I think that the makers of Facebook did a great job with their program and its features,” said freshman Alex Brooks, a communications major. “I knew what I was getting myself into when I signed up and I don’t really see anything wrong with the new changes.”

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes said the additions are not only necessary, but key to the future development and growth of the website.

“It was a logical extension of what our users were already doing on the site,” Hughes said. “You log onto Facebook to see what’s going on in the world -. everything is still the same. If you want the people at your college to see your profile, done. If you only want it to be available to your friends, cool. The idea is that the user has full control.”

Hughes said it’s a ticker of what the people who are most important to you are doing in their day to day lives.

Although Hughes said the changes are for the best, he said miscommunication between the users and the company was the problem.

“We messed up,” Hughes said. “We definitely should have given more granular controls before launching everything.”

However, the company is handling the changes based on the responses of the people who matter most: the users.

While the website’s privacy settings have become a bit more lax, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook’s goals are currently the same as when it was created in 2004, and that the news feeds and mini-feeds only add to the value of the site.

“Our goal is to help people understand what’s going on around them, and these products definitely highlight that,” Zuckerberg said.

Ashley Evans can be reached at [email protected]