This had been talked of earlier; Facebook to introduce better privacy settings when Facebook crossed the 350 Million user mark. After almost a week of his words, CEO, Mark Zuckerberg has finally rolled those out for the Facebook population. The new privacy settings are to make sharing experience much better by giving its users better options on what to share and more importantly with whom?
The challenge is definitely a big one, but so far Facebook has been good with living up to it, which is one reason why it has been a winner amongst users. Of course there have been some controversies but nothing is perfect, so we can spare it on that. Coming back to the settings, the update puts out a simplified page for its users and tools that would enable users to decide what audience to share their stuff with over the network.
Now this brings us to an interesting part of the conversation. Remember Orkut and why it failed? Being very public was its problem, which was the initial reason why people opted for Facebook and that too in large numbers. It kept your updates confined only to your most trusted contacts; the circle of friends you have and just give an eye to the current update. What is it that you see? Why do the privacy settings promote going public, when the users joined the network solely for it was very private? Baffles me, but the answer is simple: increase visibility and expose content to the countless eyes on the Internet and is this going to be welcomed by the users? Definitely not, there is a great discomfort already by the many Facebook lovers and it is only bound to increase.
Hey, you can always go back to the old settings! Yeah right, but that is so vague that many users are just lost on what are the old settings? Just visit your privacy settings and see for yourself, you have got visibility for everyone and a simple option for old settings. Now if I opt for the old settings, what exactly are those? That doesn’t explain me one dime, what were the terms of those old settings? Who can see my content if I select the old settings? Facebook doesn’t really think I am to remember the terms and options? What are they trying to do, save space by not being specific on those?
What I would rather want will be having an ability to create custom lists, like categories. This would help me easily share content with the people in the best manner, ensuring each category gets what they are interested in. It will be interesting to see users respond to this move from Facebook and what exactly does Facebook do with its strategy, seriously it doesn’t need to have extensive visibility on the Net, given the amount of traffic it already generates.
Unfortunately the new settings do not include an important privacy option that existed before: the possibility to hide our own friends list to some people or lists! I find it a big violation of my own privacy: I chose to hide my friends list from some groups of people who could just access the mutual friends, now they can see my whole list. And no way to go back as it was before!
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I bet that is one big issue and thanks for bringing it under our notice. I guess it's getting a whole like Orkut within while keeping that Facebook coat on. To be honest, most of the people don't really know much about those settings and many still don't care. We need to bring it in their knowledge what they are exposed to and how the whole concept of using Facebook continues to get axed. Please give us more feedback on your take about these new settings.
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