I continue to be fascinated by Facebook, its growth, and the number of people who use it (including the number of people from my high school graduating class). I also am amazed by how well it keeps me up to date on what's going on with people, which is great as it fills a huge need in that regard.

But the biggest fascination of mine, at least recently, is the whole deal with the "news feed" fiasco that occurred.

Facebook implemented a feature where the opening page upon logging in to the system was a feed of recent changes made by your Facebook friends to their profile or activities they've completed within the Facebook website, such as uploading pictures or whatnot.

People threw a fit over this, saying it was too stalkerish and also would clutter up the user interface on the site.

Well, Facebook responded to that criticism with an open letter that was available on the internet and within the Facebook website...and the entire thing just went away.

Now, everyone seems to love the news feed. I bet if Facebook took it away at this point, there would be a similar uprising.

Let's not forget that just months before all this occurred, Facebook users complained to no end over the company's decision to allow anyone to use Facebook ... not just college or high school students. That complaint also similarly vanished into thin air as Facebook simply marched on to their own drum.

There's a good business (or overall life) lesson in here somewhere: generally speaking, people don't really know what they want. Therefore, complaints can't really be trusted, no matter how loud they are. It's up to the people behind the scenes to have the knowledge and ability to make sense of 'background noise' coming from customers, and move forward confidently in the decided direction.