...and effect

about a month ago, I posted about the political views slot on facebook profiles and the somewhat puzzling set of options it presents. later, Sam notified me that apparently facebook had expanded its political vocabulary. instead of listing not a spectrum from conservative to liberal (with libertarian tossed in for good measure), they now provide a free response slot, similar to that for religious views, except that facebook now has a compendium of political parties in almost every country around the world from which users can choose. while the party system has its own problems, this is probably an improvement over the single conservative-liberal dimensions, especially for countries where there are more than two large, dominant parties.

this also made me wonder, did facebook really read by blog, as Sam had suggested? the more likely story is that on the official facebook dispatch about the feature, that "users have often asked for the ability to select from more options to describe their political viewpoint, so [they] expanded the list." furthermore, I highly doubt they could have compiled that extensive a list of political parties from around the world in the 10 days between my post and the announcement of the feature's release. still... it sort of makes you wonder (or at least it makes me wonder).