Finally, Facebook is giving you more control over your privacy. Starting tonight, you’ll be able choose to create lists of friends to share information with, such as photos, rather than having to share with all of your friends. Also, Facebook Chat is on its way, but it’s not launching for another few weeks. More on that below.
The new privacy features are built around the concept of the friends list that Facebook began testing last December, where you can manually sort friends into lists that you define. Now, you’ll be able to use these lists to decide who gets to see what about you. A list can be totally private, so you can do things like upload photos and share them with your “college friends” without letting any other Facebook friends get access.
The company says users have been asking for these features as the site continues to expand across demographics and countries and users’ friends become increasingly diverse. I certainly need these features, from what I saw of them.
You can place any friend into any list of friends that you create. Maybe you’d create separate lists for “co-workers,” “family,” “college friends,” etc. These lists won’t be visible to your Facebook friends themselves. Based on the privacy level you set, each list may or may not be able to see information about you, like your IM screenname (for AIM and other non-Facebook IM services), your mobile phone number, your landline, your current address, your web site, and your email addresses.
These lists are integrated into features across the site. When you send or receive a friend request, you’ll also be able to categorize your invited friend within your lists, so it’s clear to you that you’re inviting a coworker who won’t have access to your photos for “college friends.” When you add an application, you designate what level of privacy you want for it — so maybe only your family sees it on your profile page.
Other features will change slightly as a result of these new lists. Facebook’s self-described “social mapping” feature, where you can mark how you know somebody (from college, from work, etc.), will still exist as a link after you confirm somebody as a friend. Friends you have already put into the limited profile setting that Facebook already offers will now be in their own list of “limited profile friends” that you can manage.
Facebook showed a group of reporters a preview of these features this morning at one of its downtown Palo Alto offices. I was there and saw the demo but haven’t had the chance to play with the new features yet myself. I’m not sure how obvious the features will be to users — especially to new users, who don’t have hundreds of friends they’re dying to manage. The company says that the initial version of its friends lists didn’t get much traction with users, because the feature was still being iterated on, and it purposefully wasn’t made obvious to users. But it says it’s been testing the features with beta groups, so presumably the changes will go over well when they’re put in place tonight. Read the rest of this entry »
