When Facebook made a small change in its Terms of Service, the social networking company probably didn’t expect the outpouring of criticism directed at it from the blogosphere. That criticism first led to a defensive blog post by CEO Mark Zuckerberg and then, the next day, to a complete retraction of the change.

The hoopla began on Monday when The Consumerist blog revealed that Facebook had deleted the following paragraph from its TOS:

“You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire.”

And replaced it with:

“The following sections will survive any termination of your use of the Facebook service: Prohibited conduct, user content, your privacy practices [and] gift credits,” among other types of data.

In other words, even if you cancel your Facebook account, your data will never be removed and Facebook, presumably, can use that content however it sees fit. Or so the Consumerist charged.

CEO Zuckerberg tried to defend the change, writing on the company’s blog: “When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created—one in the person’s sent messages box and the other in their friend’s inbox. Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message.”

Not much of an apology, the blogosphere complained, and even The New York Times picked up the story.

Well, it seems the power of crowd has won the day. This morning, every user’s Facebook home page included the following prominently placed message:

“Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised. For more information, visit the Facebook Blog.”

The drama is undoubtedly not over yet, but round one goes to The People.

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