KSPR ABC Springfield - You can be angry and upset with Facebook after it manipulated its users' emotions as part of a study. But you shouldn't be surprised. After all, experiments on users are commonplace on the Web. We are lab rats in Internet mazes. The most common kind of Web experiment conducted on users is called an "A/B" test. That's when an online company provides a different Web experience for a small subset of customers. If you are part of the A/B test, your screen may look different than your neighbor's, even though you're both on the same website. Google constantly conducts A/B tests by making tiny tweaks to its search algorithm to see if the changes provide more useful results. CNN.com has a tool that tests different headlines to see which one generates more clicks. (CNNMoney does A/B testing as well.) And Facebook A/B tests everything from the placement of ads to which content appears in your News Feed. We all agree to these experiments, whether we're aware of them
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