Everything you need to know about today’s Facebook announcement
Facebook has today announced a number of changes that you need to know about. The changes make it easier to share information publicly without getting bogged down in Facebook’s current complicated privacy controls.
Here they all in one simple-to-follow list.
- It’s now easier to control who sees what
Wherever you can share anything (photos, videos, personal information etc) you’ll be able to choose from multiple privacy levels; ‘Everyone’ (to make it completely public), ‘Friends and Networks’, ‘Friends of Friends’, ‘Share With Friends’ and ‘Customize’ (allowing you to choose specific people to share with.
- Privacy options have been simplified
Privacy options for your Facebook account currently span six pages. These have been consolodated into one page.
- Regional networks are being removed
These have always been an odd part of the Facebook experience. Some countries had many small networks while others had one network. Facebook says only 50% of users are in a regional network.
- Transition Tools are being introduced
To ensure that users are eased into Facebook’s new-found ability to share anything with anyone, Transition Tools are being introduced. This will allow you to change who can see different parts of your profile quickly and easily. Until you change anything here, your existing privacy settings will remain in place.
When do we get these changes?
The new privacy controls and the removal of regional networks will be rolled out to all users over the next few weeks.
Should I set up a Facebook Group to complain about all of this?
The good news is that if you like your profile to be private it will stay that way. If you want to operate more publicly you can do that too while still being sure that those embarrassing photos from your college years remain hidden from public view.
While it’s good that Facebook is simplifying its privacy options, there are still concerns. Facebook is considering allowing anything that’s shared with ‘Everyone’ to be indexed by search engines. This makes sense on one level, but what about if you want to change your mind and make it private later? Will those embarrassing photos remain cached by Google if you hide them from view on Facebook?
While previous Facebook changes have caused uproar, it’s unlikely there’ll be much to complain about here. It’s not like Facebook is sudenly opening your profile up for everyone to see (unless you want them to). Only the removal regional networks may cause a problem, but opening up parts of your profile to everyone should solve this problem for most people.
UPDATE: There’s a new iPhone app too!
Shortly after the above changes were announced, Techcrunch reported details of the new version of the Facebook iPhone app. An update is much needed; the current version is highly buggy and frequently crashes for some users.
The new version is to feature a revised UI, support for the recently introduced ‘Twitter-esque’ Activity Feed, support fr event invitations and improved Alerts. Push notifications aren’t supported unfortunately, but they’re promised in a later update. The new app is due “Very soon”.
Martin Bryant is based in Manchester, UK. A co-founder of the city's monthly Social Media Cafe events and award-winning blogger, he is Digital Content Editor for Marketing Manchester. His main interests are developments in the social web that relate to the mobile and music industries. Twitter, Blog, FriendFeed
The only issue I can see is removing regional networks.
Half the time it’s the only way to distinguish between many people with the same name if you can’t make out their profile pic. Which is often the case as you only get a thumbnail.
Will they add a location field, Twitter-style?
At least with twitter’s location field you can be as specific (geo lat-long) or as vague as you like, and if you live in multiple places (I work in Manchester during the week and live in London at weekends for example) you can express that. Right now facebook only allows one geographical network at a time…
Paul, I think they’ll have to at a location field. With Regional networks being removed there needs to be some way to identify where you are. There’s a ‘Hometown’ field but that’s open to different interpretations.
Maybe a future version of the mobile app will allow you to submit realtime location data if you so desire.
Or indeed ‘Add’ a location field :)
I think regional networks are right to be taken away. As you (Paul) say, they don’t really work as people can live in more than one, and in the UK for instance, a lot of people have joined the London network even though they are well outside the M25 area and not in London at all – they just don’t have an alternative regional network to join.
The easiest way to distinguish between people with the same name (when they’re not your friends) is to just put their e-mail address (which you will know if you know them?) into the regular Facebook search box – this will limit the search result to just them. Beyond that, you can do an advanced profile search (http://www.facebook.com/advanced.php) to search within your network(s), and I assume when they get rid of regional networks, you’ll revert to a national network instead.
Don’t forget that Facebook profiles do have fields for ‘Current location’ and ‘Hometown’ which could be displayed in search results.
[...] Everything you need to know about today’s Facebook announcement [...]
Erm how long will it take to be sorted-as i can’t get into facebook to see anything-its just loading for ages, but nothing happens-this because you are doing sum changes, to the website?
Another issue in this badly thought-out change is that many people move in the US. And many of us want to be in the network where we previously lived.. we do NOT want to be tied to a job or school, we want to be connected regionally. It allowed us to network regionally, and find friends of friends, and former classmates and co-workers easily.
Terrible idea to remove these. What were they thinking? It’s not hard to set your privacy settings, they never were… people don’t want to be that private on FB, they want old friends to find them, etc. Why did you make it harder?