In the days to come, user privacy on Facebook is about to get a lot richer, effective and simpler to manage. Facebook is tailoring its privacy controls, giving more than 200 million Facebook members more control over their photos, comments and personal details that they share with friends, family or strangers.
These changes follow the recent announcement of new privacy controls on Facebook to hide updates from unwanted audience. The changes will be tested with 40,000 Facebook members in the US and will probably appear over the next few weeks everywhere else in the world.
Twitter Threat?
Many believe that Facebook, in the recent past, has been facing stiff competition with the growing popularity of the micro-blogging site Twitter. As a result of this, the social networking site is making all possible attempts to catch up by making its tools simpler for its members to use.
With this move, Facebook hopes that people will be more comfortable posting items as easily and freely as they do on Twitter and other services.
Effective Privacy
Facebook is tailoring its privacy controls based on 3 principles:
- Control
- Simplicity
- Connection
Condense, Simplify!
Less than a quarter of Facebook users regularly adjust privacy settings. These changes on Facebook will help condense and simplify the existing 40 different options on more than six pages, and bring them all into a single, easy-to-navigate page.
- Now you get to decide your audience by simply going to one page. All you need to do is set who all should have access to your posts, updates or personal information on Facebook – friends, people in your network, everyone.
- You also have the option to change settings for each piece of the content you post on Facebook.
- By using the recommended setting, you can make your basic info and content posts that you don’t mind anyone to view, public.
Not as “simple” as it may sound?
Although the new system is bringing with it some pretty cool options, but the question that arises is, how many people would want to bother themselves with it or will realize the implications of public sharing? By giving the users too many options, you give them many choices to choose from. This inadvertently makes the process more complex.
Do share your comments on what you think.
(Source: Fb blog)