Facebook has, following a huge online campaign by users, removed the 'is' from its status updates.
At first glance, it seems an inconsequential move, and indeed for a lot of people means absolutely nothing.
Yet for several of my friends, it would not be underestimating things to say it has completely ruined their Christmas.
Facebook status updates, for the unitiated, are the mechanism by which you let your friends on the site know what you are doing. You can thrill to the revelation that 'Dave is doing the washing up', or 'Andrea is deciding what to have for lunch'.
Yet this week, Facebook tweaked the system, which previously automatically added an 'is' at the beginning of updates.
For addicts, of which there are many, it's been a major upheaval. Just minutes after the change was made, this popped onto my news feed:
"Alison is thoroughly discombobulated by the removal of the mandatory ‘is’. My whole world has shifted on its axis. Everything I know is wrong."
Now, it has to said my friend Alison does take her Facebook status updates more seriously that most - I've seen seven or eight in a day from her, all obviously having been thought through at great length. It all points to an interesting problem the emergence of social networking has led to - knowing too much about our friends.
It's not that I don't have an interest in what my mates are upto. But in actual, real life conversations the phrase 'I am doing the washing up' tends not to occur very often, and that's a good thing.
So what can be done? I propose a worldwide boycott of Facebook status updates.
If recent figures on Facebook usage are to be believed, I think one day a week where we don't have to read what everyone we know is thinking of having for dinner would save London's offices thousands of hours in lost productivity.
Rather than the 'facebook hour' that many companies have introduced, how about a 'real life' evening where we all go to the pub and get drunk with our friends instead?