Firstain

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who recently turned 26, has kept his promise and revised Facebook's privacy settings, giving users a far better control. Now users can decide what information to share and with whom. They can share their information with friends only, friends of friends, everyone, or none of them at all. Users will also have the option to block 3rd party applications getting access to their private information with just a click or two. Yes, its that simple now.

When we started Facebook, we built it around a few simple ideas. People want to share and stay connected with their friends and the people around them. When you have control over what you share, you want to share more. When you share more, the world becomes more open and connected.

- said Mark Zuckerberg, who recollected there were absolutely no features, no status updates, photo albums, messages, etc when Facebook first started. As time passed, the site grew with a quick pace and turned its attention to more of content sharing with different groups of people. But with it came more privacy settings which did more harm than good. Such was the complexity of these settings that users failed to understand what setting is safe for them. This led to many complaints to the Facebook team and also emergence of many groups on Facebook which echoed the people who were against these settings. Facebook's aim was to give the users total control of their settings but it failed to happen that way.

The number one thing we've heard is that there just needs to be a simpler way to control your information. We've always offered a lot of controls, but if you find them too hard to use then you won't feel like you have control. Unless you feel in control, then you won't be comfortable sharing and our service will be less useful for you. We agree we need to improve this.

Now, learning from their mistakes and listening carefully to user grievances, Facebook have rolled out a new, user-friendly control for all your privacy settings. Now all applications and websites can only see content that is already visible to everyone. They must get permission to access anything else. Facebook also recommends to share basic info like status updates and posts with everyone, content like photos and videos of you with friends of your friends, and sensitive items like contact information with only your real friends. This way privacy is maintained and at the same time the purpose of staying in touch with friends and socializing is achieved.

The Changes - in Detail!

The changes have been focused on mainly three things - a single control for your content, more powerful controls for your basic information and an easy control to turn off all applications.

Simpler privacy controls gradually launching at www.facebook.com/privacy

There's one simple control to set who can see the content one posts. In a couple of clicks, one can set the content he/she posted to be open to everyone, friends of your friends or just your friends.

This control will also apply to settings in new products we launch going forward. So if you decide to share your content with friends only, then we will set future settings to friends only as well. This means you won't have to worry about new settings in the future.

The amount of basic information that must be visible to everyone has been reduced and the connections privacy model has been removed altogether. Now users will have full control over who can see your friends and pages. These fields will no longer have to be public.

It is also simple now to prevent applications and websites to gain access to a user's information. So in case you don't like using many applications or playing games then you can turn off the Platform completely.

If you simply want to turn off instant personalization, we've also made that easier. Already, partner sites can only see things you've made visible to everyone. But if you want to prevent them from even seeing that, you can now easily turn off instant personalization completely.

From the man himself - Mark Zuckerberg

I am pleased to say that with these changes the overhaul of Facebook's privacy model is complete. If you find these changes helpful, then we plan to keep this privacy framework for a long time. That means you won't need to worry about changes. (Believe me, we're probably happier about this than you are.)

Of course we'll continue responding to your feedback and making things simpler. But after our recent changes we're now done migrating away from the old network-based privacy model. Our new model will help the Facebook community grow to millions of more people around the world.

On a personal note, I just turned 26 years old a few days ago. I started Facebook when I was 19 and it's amazing to look back at how it has evolved. There have been a lot of changes over the years as we've continued to innovate, and I appreciate that you have all stuck with us. Each time we make a change we try to learn from past lessons, and each time we make new mistakes too. We are far from perfect, but we always try our hardest to build the best service for you and for the world. So I just want to say thanks.

As of today:

These new settings will be rolled out to everyone over the next few weeks. We are happy Facebook is listening to us and doing this for us. The world's largest social network will be safe again (or will it?). Only time will tell.

Tell us what are your thoughts on this in the comments section.

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