Hallelujah, granularity is here! (Facebook)

So if you’ve logged onto Facebook this morning, you’d find out that Facebook has changed their Privacy controls quite a bit by adding more granularity. Here is what they posted at the top of my News Feed,

We’ve added more privacy options.

Now you can use friend lists to control exactly who can see what. We’ve also added the option to share information with “Friends of Friends”. For more details, check out the Privacy page.

So what does this mean? Let me take a look at all of the different areas we can now tweak, adjusting the visibility of a Facebook user’s account.

• Profile
  • Before, we were limited to creating only one list of people called the “Limited Profile” where users could select portions of their profile to be shown, and the rest hidden to select Friends. In the previous system, it was an all in, the limited profile view, or a complete block of a user. This was limited because most users in the real world have multiple subsets of friends, that could be categorized under “Work/Professional”, “School”, “Family”, and more. These different subsets would only be allowed certain bits of information, such as pictures/videos, what you were doing exactly, or even who your other friends are. Now a user’s profile can be tailored exactly to how they specify them to be. For example, you may not want your professional friends to see any videos or pictures of you so you can create a “friend list” for them, and add that list to a limited group who cannot access those areas of your profile. This is powerful because it enables the Facebook user to more clearly define the offline groups in their Facebook network.
  • On the opposite end of the spectrum, it looks like Facebook has also allowed users to open up their profile more if they choose to do so. They have added a new grouping of access called “Friends of Friends”. This can be enabled for the different areas of the profile to make it easier for second degree friends to access certain bits of your profile, such as your contact info and basic information. This is good for those who have a small Facebook network of people and are willing to give more information out to more friends of friends that will help make more connections possible.

All in all, this is what I have been waiting for. I haven’t found any real faults with the addition of more advanced, granular customizations to the Privacy area of my own Facebook account. I believe it can only improve the usability of Facebook. In my first module paper, which I have attached here Facebook’s Pattern for Privacy Concern, it looks as if Facebook has answered my plea. Thanks Mark and Company!