Facebook tweaks privacy settings while users continue to resist new look
Facebook today unveiled an additional choice in its privacy settings, one that allows users to share their information with anyone on Facebook - not just their friends or people in their networks. Facebook engineer Mark Slee writes in a blog post:
One of the top priorities at Facebook is offering privacy controls that let you choose exactly what you share with whom. We have largely focused on enabling you to give access to your profile to people you confirmed as friends and people in your networks. While these controls remain important and a priority for us, many of you have explained that you also want to open parts of your profile to a wider audience. Starting today, you can choose to make your profile and any of your content available to everyone on Facebook.
In some ways, it's a Twitter-like move. There are some who want to be able to share with everyone - which is what happens when a Tweet is displayed on Twitter's public page. But unlike Twitter, which posts on the public page unless you restrict it, Facebook's "everyone" feature isn't applied by default. Users have to manually go in and make the change.
That's a good thing. It's best to let users make their own decisions on those sorts of things.
Ya know, there are always going to be vocal groups of people who resist change. With that said, I'm not a big fan of the new Facebook look either. Granted, I have scaled back the amount of time I spend on Facebook - so maybe I just haven't had a chance to hate it yet. But I really haven't given it a fair chance yet.
I wonder. Since Facebook is giving us an increasing number of options to customize it to our needs, why not just give the user the option here, too. After all, Yahoo Mail did it. Users there have the option of using the Mail or Mail Classic interfaces - and can freely switch back and forth.
Isn't that better than them bashing you on your own blog?
Also see: Facebook's new look: Will it show us the money?
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