10 December 2009 | Author: D. Warburton Search Copywriter

Facebook unveils new privacy settings

Facebook is offering new privacy options to grant users better control over their personal data, in some aspects at least.

The social networking site, which boasts around 350 million members worldwide, is asking users to review their privacy settings for all content posted to Facebook. While the site states that it is seeking to empower users by giving them improved control over their data, Brad Stone of the New York Times observes that the revisions also provide an opportunity for Facebook to fix faulty or outdated services that may be holding it back in the social networking market against rivals such as Twitter.

In a press release, Facebook's Vice President of Communications, Public Policy and Marketing, Elliot Schrage, stated: "Facebook is transforming the world's ability to control its information online by empowering more than 350 million people to personalize the audience for each piece of content they share.

"We've always designed Facebook to enable people to control what information they share with whom—it's the reason our service continues to attract such a broad and diverse group of users from around the world. We're proud of the latest evolution we're announcing today and we will continue to innovate to serve users' changing needs."

Facebook users will be prompted by a transition tool to access these new privacy settings. Among these revisions is the elimination of regional networks, which the site believes are no longer useful to users now that membership in many regions has grown to millions. Instead, Facebook users can now customise who they share content with - whether that's friends, people in their extended social network, or all users.

However, the storm that has long been brewing over Facebook's privacy policies is likely to have been given a fresh push with this latest news, as Facebook is also now stating that it wants an increased amount of personal data to be available in search results. Great news for searchers, not so much for those who wish to keep their profile pictures accessible only to designated friends. But Facebook has managed to recover from many privacy disputes in the past, it seems likely that the social networking site will be able to drown new complaints in a similar manner.

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