Facebook Introduces New Pages For Couples

You know that annoying couple you're friends with on Facebook? The one who's always putting up soppy status updates, cutesy pictures, and stomach-churningly sweet wall posts?

Prepare yourself: they're about to get even more annoying.

Facebook has recently launched a digital version of relationships at Facebook.com/us. If you're in a relationship on Facebook, the new page collects all posts, events, and photos that both you and your significant other are tagged in. It's a one stop shop for all the details of your digital romance.

Reviews are...mixed, to say the least.

"I want to vomit," wrote blogger Jennifer Wright on TheGloss.

Emma Barnett, an editor at The Telegraph, wrote that she's considering breaking up with her husband on Facebook just so she can get rid of the couple's page. "Mr. Zuckerberg: by all means keep giving people new tools -- as you did when you created Facebook," she wrote. "But when you start doing things for us -- the experience is anything but social or remotely positive. You have infantilised my relationship for me with the creation of www.facebook.com/us. Only I should get to do that."

Ouch.

Others aren't feeling quite so harsh about the new development. "There's nothing creepy here, that I can see, just more out of proportion reactions to something new, different and innovative," wrote Justin McLachlan in response to The Telegraph's article. "It's no different, really, than typing your name into Google and seeing your face and other personal details from social networks mashed up in sidebar."

In fact, the new Relationship pages aren't really much different from the Friendship pages that have existed on the site for more than two years. Both are getting a makeover to look like Facebook's more visual Timeline profile. Both show your history with someone else on the site. The only real difference is that there is a direct Internet address - Facebook.com/us - to access the Relationship page.

If you don't like the page, you're out of luck. It can't be deactivated, but you can control the info that appears on your page using the privacy settings on each post.

"The friendship page respects the privacy setting of each post," Facebook's Jessie Baker told CNN. "This means the person viewing the friendship page may see each post elsewhere on Facebook, like on either friend's timeline or in news feed. You can curate your friendship page by hiding stories you do not want to appear."

What do you think of Facebook's new Relationship pages? Are they a step forward or a step back?

If you are single and are looking for a relationship on a social network, then you should read about how to use Facebook as a dating tool.