Facebook tightens up on gender and grammar

Jordan Golson — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:59:21 -0700

Just like a 4th grade student, Facebook is going to learn good grammar -- specifically, the pronouns and possessives related to gender. Users who haven't noted their gender will be asked to do so. As a result, instead of getting notes like "Jordan changed their profile picture", it'll know that I'm a male and say "Jordan changed his profile picture."

Users won't have to choose a gender if they don't want to, but anyone who hasn't, will be prompted to. The Associated Press notes that not knowing gender presents "grammatical challenges" in Engl ish, the same problem has caused larger problems for Facebook in other languages, where a gender-neutral descriptors aren't available.

Facebook product manager Naomi Gleit wrote on the Facebook blog that "people who haven't selected what sex they are frequently get defaulted to the wrong sex entirely," on the Facebook blog. Facebook had also made up "themself" as an alternative to "himself or herself."

Just one more step in Facebook's growing pains.

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